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“C-c-c-c-coach!!!”
“Ah, Furihata, Kuroko. Kagadummy! You’re back.”
As Riko threw the Seirin ace into a headlock, her head turned towards the two most subdued members of her team.
“So, Furihata, how did it go?”
With tears trailing down his cheeks and shaking legs, Furihata did his best to look Riko in the eyes.
“P-p-please d-don’t ask me t-to do something l-l-like that again.”
Kuroko gave a slight bow. “Apologies, Coach. I should have warned both of you that Akashi might be volatile, but I did not think you would believe me.”
“Volatile?” Riko tilted her head to the side.
“H-he almost s-stabbed Kagami!”
“What? Is this a joke?”
“I’m afraid I still haven’t developed a sense of humor, Coach.”
Riko looked down at the boy in her arms to see the cut that graced his cheek. “Kagami, why didn’t you say anything?”
Kagami turned his head as far away as he could and pouted. “Not like it matters. Don’t think the kid would’ve done it if he didn’t think I could dodge it. He wasn’t going to do it to Furihata.”
That side comment made Furihata shake even more.
“I don’t know, Kagami-kun. Akashi-kun would not have done this in our second year, but he’s different now. Not even I could say for sure what factors contributed to what he did.”
The coach released her captive and stood straighter. “Alright boys, to the locker room. Furihata, I want you to fill us in while you sit, you’re shaking bad enough to fall over.”
“I might need some help walking.”
*
“I-I-I don’t understand how Kuroko even managed to walk up to them!”
The blank boy who sat beside Furihata tilted his head. “They’re just my ex-teammates.”
The Seirin players bristled at the nonchalance in Kuroko’s tone.
“Aaaaaaah, Kuroko, how did you not even notice? All the members of the Generation of Miracles were there! There was so much pressure in one place I couldn’t even move, coach!
Aomine pointed me out immediately, too, so it made it even scarier! I think he asked Kuroko why he had a babysitter? Murasakibara said something about Aomine having a ‘Sa-chin’ though? Aomine said Satsuki had nothing to do with it, though.”
“’Sa-chin’ is Momoi.”
It took thirty seconds for the team to remember that Momoi had been the Teiko team manager. “Murasakibara uses Momoi’s first name for his nickname?”
Kuroko gave a curt nod. “Well, all of the miracles, Momoi, and myself all have nicknames of some sort from Murasakibara-kun, Kise-kun, and Momoi. Midorima-kun and I were the only ones who preferred to continue using last names, but we all have permission to use first names with each other.”
The team froze. Logically, they had heard Momoi and Aomine call Kuroko ‘Tetsu’, but it did not fully register to them what the nickname had meant. First names were special – you only used those for people who were as close to you as family. Nicknames, too, were still overly familiar, even if they centered around the last name.
The team had gotten close enough that each of them had dropped the honorifics amongst each other most of the time, but some members stilled the more they thought of Kuroko’s statement.
Tsuchida raised a hand. “When was the last time Midorima used an honorific when calling you?”
Kuroko tilted his head as he thought. “Maybe… before our second training camp? It’s been so long I can’t remember Midorima using honorifics with any of us. Takao was not joking that Midorima is very tsundere. Though, he has never once complained about Kise’s nickname.”
With a stiff smile, Izuki sought clarification. “Kise specifically?”
Kuroko gave another nod, his face as close to grim as his face would allow. “To be fair, Aomine-kun and I were the ones who complained the most about the nickname. I mean, it’s just so rambunctious. It draws a lot of attention to me.”
Of course, Kuroko’s concern was about how it affected his presence. He was completely unaffected by just how close the prodigies were. The smaller boy was sensible, but he sometimes struck the team as an even bigger basketball idiot than Kagami.
Then, a thought hit Furihata. “Say, Kuroko, you said that 'we all have permission to use first names with each other'. Why do you still call them all by their family names?”
Kuroko looked down at his lap.
“Well, I just didn't really want to. The others didn't really change the nicknames they used, either. Kise didn’t like the way our first names sounded with the nickname attached. Murasakibara only changed Momoi’s nickname because she thought 'Sa-chin' was much cuter than being called ‘Mo-chin’. Midorima didn't like the attention that you get from using first names in public - or explaining who he was talking about. Momoi liked the nicknames she gave us better and if I remember right, Aomine-kun said something about it making my nickname ‘less special’ because all of us would be calling each other by first name.
Akashi-kun didn't even start using our first names until later. He just dropped honorifics when we decided we were close enough.”
The coach blinked at their sixth man. That would be a lot to unpack at another time. “With that aside – Furihata, why did all of that stick out to you?”
It was Furihata’s turn to nod at their team. “W-well, it was just really informal for the amount of pressure they were all giving off. Kise’s phone kept buzzing and he was talking about texts from fangirls while Murasakibara asked Kuroko for help opening a bag of chips. They were completely unfazed by each other when I almost couldn’t breathe.”
Kuroko turned to look at Furihata with what the team thought was surprise. “Huh? Furihata, you could have stepped back if it was that bad for you.”
The team wanted to cringe. Kuroko was that unfazed by the aura of the Miracles?
“How could you even stand it, Kuroko? You’re weaker than me in some aspects and you were perfectly relaxed!”
Kuroko kept his focus on Furihata. “I admit, the others have an impressive presence, but they’ve always been imposing. Even when we were first years at Teiko, they had that aura about them. However, they were all my lights when we played together, I just played best with Aomine-kun.”
They were all his lights.
“Kuroko, don’t you think that would be something you should have stated before we got this far?” Came the coach’s irritated response.
With tilt of his head, Kuroko turned back to the rest of the team. “I thought it would be obvious? No one ever noticed me on court because the five of them shined too brightly for me to be seen. It was better like that. I drew your attention to Aomine-kun because, while Murasakibara and Akashi will be difficult to defeat, Aomine was undoubtedly the strongest Miracle.
Besides, I am sure we can defeat the Miracles better with team play than if we focused on trying to stop the Miracles specifically. They all chose strong schools, it will hurt us more if we focus on my old teammates rather than their teams as a whole. Their weakness has been that they play by themselves and, as such, focus on singular players. We can’t do that.”
Logically, Kuroko was right, but it was still infuriating that the light blue boy never shared anything until he was asked. “So, Kuroko and the Generation of Miracles are on a given name basis, they were treating a get together like that as if it was a Sunday brunch, and what else?”
“But that’s the thing, Coach! They treated it like it was a walk in the park, but it also felt like they would have broken into a fist fight if I said the wrong thing!”
“Ah – we didn’t exactly part on the best of terms. Just because we are on a first name basis doesn’t mean they considered each other friends by the time we left Teiko.”
Kagami perked up. “They? Why do you still consider them friends?”
Kuroko didn’t lift his eyes from his shoes to address his new light. “Just because it doesn’t look like it doesn’t affect me doesn’t mean I don’t know how it must feel to others. I have my own concerns regarding the Generation of Miracles. They don’t call each other friends, but I know the bonds we had are still there, even if they’re a little faint. The names they use are proof enough.”
Furihata couldn’t help but stare at Kuroko for a bit before he continued regaling the team with the events of this morning.
“Anyway, after Kuroko and I showed up, so did Akashi. He singled me out and told me to go away, but I couldn’t really move even if I wanted to. It was kind of weird, how informal everyone was, but also really formal? All of the Miracles just came because he said so and he called all of them by their first names, like Kuroko said.
The only reason Akashi stopped focusing on me is because that’s when Kagami showed up. But then he came down the steps and told Midorima to give him his scissors.”
“Scissors?!”
The three first years who were there nodded. Kuroko took some mercy on Furihata for telling most of the encounter. “Cancer’s lucky item for the day. Akashi-kun approached Kagami with the scissors to introduce himself, it was fairly shocking.”
“Fairly shocking?! Kuroko, he wasn’t just shaking hands! He tried to hit Kagami with the blades of the scissors! Also, you and I were the only ones concerned about it! Even then, you didn’t do anything after you realized Kagami was fine! You just stood there with your face as impassive as ever!”
“Well, Kagami only received a scratch.”
“That doesn’t make it better, Kuroko!”
Kagami intervened then. “Trying to hit me or not, I dodged him just fine. Are we not gonna talk about why he got all of you out there in the first place? He said something about ‘confirming you all remembered your promise’ after he saw all of you there. What was that all about?”
Once again, Kuroko was subdued. “I… I don’t know if I can talk about it. Not yet.”
“What do you mean you can’t talk about it? This pertains to us too, you know! He was staring me and Furihata down like we were intruders or something!”
Kuroko slightly shrunk in on himself. “And I’m sorry about that, Furihata-kun, Kagami-kun. But I don’t think I can answer that question just yet. It will distract the team from what we really need to be focused on if we want to beat the others. We shouldn’t worry about Akashi until we have to.”
“Kuroko, are you absolutely positive? Until we need to won’t be until the end of the tournament, if that. Rakuzan and Shuutoku were placed on the other side of the bracket.”
Kuroko gave a grim nod with no further elaboration. The coach could only sigh and accept the situation for what it was.
“Alright. We trust you, Kuroko. Just make sure you tell us when it’s time, without prompting.”
The team had other implications they could focus on for the time being. Even now, after months of playing together as a team, it caught them by surprise just how intertwined their team had become with the Generation of Miracles and their teams. The Phantom Sixth Man was theirs now, but it sometimes seemed like each of the Miracles was trying to throw Seirin off from how intimately they knew the shadow.
None of the Miracles could track Kuroko reliably, but every one of them had singled him out first. Kise interrupted their practice just to talk to him, Midorima approached their team before the Shuutoku match just to talk directly to Kuroko, and the rest of the first years had reported to the team that Murasakibara had directly talked to their number eleven once he had finished talking to that American kid that Kagami knew.
Even Kagami had told them about his encounter with Aomine, the only one where the miracle had not sought out Kuroko first. It took a lot of prodding, but eventually Kagami had divulged that, after being thoroughly beaten by the miracle ace, Aomine had only shamed Kagami for ‘holding Kuroko back’. Then, when their first match arrived and Aomine had finally showed up, he walked directly to Kuroko.
It wasn’t like the Seirin players knew nothing about the rumors surrounding the phantom that the Generation of Miracles respected, but sometimes the stories seemed blown out of proportion when they had played so much with the person himself. Today only emphasized that the Miracles didn’t see Kuroko as a separate entity from them.
The public never coined the phantom as a member of the Generation of Miracles. His game record was nonexistent before joining Seirin despite being a seasoned player before joining. Teiko didn’t even acknowledge that the boy had been an incredibly active member of their basketball team. But each and every miracle was cautious around their team, and it was not for their team’s skill.
It frustrated the second years a bit; it was overwhelming for the first years. They had believed for a while before the Touou match that the Miracles were just glorified, strong players after beating Kise and Midorima. Aomine had shown them that regular players really didn’t stand a chance. They could be as good as they wanted, but only Miracle teams could beat other Miracle teams.
Kuroko was silent, impassive, and largely unimpressive. And then you saw him. If you could keep your eyes on him, he moved with a smooth grace that seemed impossible to maintain on a court. If you could see him set up for one of his higher-level passes, the muscles that were normally hidden by his smooth skin bulged. You could even see how effortlessly the invisible boy read the other players on the court, predicting with a scary accuracy exactly what moves could be made by his teammates and where.
Sometimes, the team felt like Kuroko was a just a player that worked very hard, constantly. He made them feel that each of them could catch up to the prodigies if they just practiced hard enough. Somehow, today only solidified that only Miracles could keep up with another Miracle. It finally clicked.
They were the team for the self-made Miracle. The most respected Miracle.
He chose them because they were just like him – overlooked, but full of spirit. Their heart was what he had been looking for. Their friendship would be why they win.