After spending the last fifteen minutes consoling the broken-hearted blonde, who had holed himself underneath the blankets of his own bed, Kuroko finally managed to soothe down Kise and returned with him to the low table where different types of snacks and candies had been spread. Around the table were the other four basketball players, Aomine displaying a sulking expression on his face after having been scolded by Akashi for continuing to tease Kise even after he went into hiding. Throughout that whole exchange, Midorima simply cleaned his glasses and Murasakibara started munching on some maiubo.
“Thank you for your patience. Kise-kun is back in form,” announced Kuroko, sitting down once again on his pillow.
“I’m sorry for the trouble…” apologized Kise, still avoiding direct eye contact with all the onlookers. “B-But the photos really aren’t like that! T-They are just… um… memories for the future? Please don’t tell anyone about them! Especially my teammates in Kaijou!”
Seeing the blonde suddenly bow down to them in an extremely formal stance, all of them exchanged glances and then looked right back to Kise.
“What photos? I don’t remember ever talking about anything like that,” started Aomine, averting his gaze from the blonde while picking on his ear. “Let’s just forget this whole thing and start the gathering. I’ve received a text from Satsuki saying that she can’t come because she got unexpectedly busy. Don’t ask me with what, though.”
“Ehh~ Sa-chin won’t come?” softly complained Murasakibara, crunching the plastic wrap of the savoury snack he ate in his big hand. “And here I was waiting to see what snacks she would bring…”
“Knowing Momoi, she should probably bring something she made herself,” pointed out Midorima, adjusting his glasses. All of them felt a sudden shudder creep up their spines at such a thought.
“Well, seeing as we’re all here now, we should start this gathering,” announced Akashi. He looked over to the blonde, who was still standing while looking at them with a sort of lost expression on his face, and softly smiled at him. “Kise, sit down already. Now it’s time for the ‘celebration’ to really start, isn’t it?”
“Ah… Yes~!” Smiling brightly, Kise almost jumped while departing from near the bed and sat down next to Midorima, where the last free pillow was located. He picked the plastic cup in front of him and raised it in the air. “Okay! Let’s start the celebration! Cheers for all of us having successfully advanced to our second year of high school~!!”
“I never had any doubts that I wouldn’t succeed to do such an easy thing,” mumbled Midorima under his breath as he motioned his hand forward to grab his cup.
“Don’t sweat the details, Midorima. Let’s just go along with it,” added Akashi, a plastic cup already in his hand. He turned his face around and looked over to Kuroko, who was sitting next to him. “I went downstairs and grabbed a vanilla milkshake for you.”
“Oh, thank you, Akashi-kun.” The bluenette also lunged one of his hands forward and picked up the plastic cup from Maji Burger that housed his favourite drink. He probably wouldn’t be able to drink anything else, seeing as all the other drinks displayed there were carbonated drinks. It seemed it was a good thing he decided to bring vanilla milkshakes, after all.
All the basketball players raised their respective drinks and bumped their cups together at the same time, yelling “Cheers!” in unison. After that, they all started animatedly talking with each other.
“Murasakibara,” started all of a sudden Midorima, eyeing the purple-haired giant. He motioned his arm to the bag he had brought and rumbled inside of it with his hand. “This is your lucky item of the day. It seems like it’s quite your type of thing so I’ll be giving it to you already.”
“Ehh? What is it, Mido-chin?” asked Murasakibara, pulling his eyes away from the bowl filled to the brim with potato chips. When he saw the green-haired male take a package of a limited edition of pocky, Giant Rainbow Pocky, his mouth started watering in delight. “Thanks, Mido-chin!”
“Hmph! I only brought it because it was your lucky item. Nothing more,” added Midorima, averting the thankful gaze of the taller male while adjusting his glasses.
“Ahahaha! After all, it was Midorima who gained Murasakibara’s support!” laughed Aomine, throwing a sideways glance to the blonde. Seeing the sudden pouting expression on the other male’s face due to his words, he cleared his throat and slapped his hand on his back. “Cheer up already, Kise! The world’s not gonna end just because we know you’re hiding some sort of nasty photos with ya.”
“Ugh… You say that because it’s not you this is all about…” grumbled Kise, playing awkwardly with his fingers. “I’m a model. I have a reputation to maintain! If someone finds out I have such a thing in my room… My career would be over instantly!”
“Don’t worry, don’t worry! We won’t tell anyone,” insisted the tanned male, grinning happily. “And even if I wanted to tell anyone, Tetsu wouldn’t let me! Right, Tetsu? Oh, he’s not here.”
Aomine looked around the blonde’s bedroom and saw no signs of the small bluenette. Though, well, he was already used to that happening since it was a recurrent event from their very first meeting back in middle school.
“Kuroko went downstairs with Akashi. Apparently, Akashi also wants to try one of the vanilla milkshakes and Kuroko used that chance to go grab another for himself,” explained Midorima, sipping on his own drink.
“Woah, that was fast! Kurokocchi already drank all of that?” exclaimed Kise completely surprised, looking at the empty cup laid on top of the table. “I really have to wonder how he’s able to binge-drink vanilla milkshakes all the time… Maybe I should go get one for me too~”
Aomine quickly grabbed the blonde’s arm the moment he jumped up on his feet, stopping him from following after the two smaller males. “Are you sure you want to do that, Kise?”
“Eh? W-Why are you asking that?” hesitantly questioned Kise, looking down to the tanned male. When he saw the dark glint on his eyes and the evil smirk tugging his lips upwards, he understood very well what he was trying to get at. “Ah, thinking better about it, I don’t need a vanilla milkshake right now. Yup, this drink is more than fine! Actually, I don’t think I need to exit my bedroom at all until the celebration is over. Yes, I’ll just continue here, in my bedroom, all the time.”
Satisfied that Kise had believed in his threat and motioned back down once again, Aomine looked over to the door that connected the bedroom to the hallway. After the last gathering they had, which occurred in Kuroko’s birthday, the bluenette and redhead had started to grow steadily closer once again. He didn’t really know how close, but he knew that they usually talked with each other on the phone every week and that, every so often, Akashi invited Kuroko to go spend a day or two in Kyoto, sometimes coming he himself to Tokyo to meet with him.
I really wonder what those two do when they meet or what they talk about in their phone calls, thought the tanned male in the back of his mind, a slight feeling of amusement igniting inside of him at that particular situation.
They all continued to talk with each other, Midorima complaining about how Murasakibara was making a mess out of the snacks he was eating and Kise throwing worried glances every once in a while to his desk while chatting with Aomine. Some minutes later, the tanned male started to hear soft footsteps climbing up the stairs and decided to listen to what the two smaller males were talking about.
“His initial works were very good, but I have to agree with you, Kuroko. Murakami Haruki was at his best when he wrote ‘1Q84’,” said the voice of the redhead.
“The mystery plot of that dystopian world got me stuck to it in the very first pages. It was an extremely enjoyable journey, reading those three volumes,” added the bluenette, a small glint of enthusiasm in his voice. “It really made me wonder if such things are possible. Like entering inside of a parallel word or other supernatural things happening without any explanation.”
“The world is still a big unknown, so who knows if such things don’t usually happen around us and we just pass by them without noticing anything at all?” pointed out the redhead, coming into view to those inside of the bedroom. He was holding in his hand a milkshake cup from Maji Burger and came to a halt on the door, letting the smaller male enter before him. “What did you thought of his latest novel?”
“You mean ‘Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage’?” asked Kuroko, looking to the taller male while sitting down once again in his pillow. “I still haven’t found a chance to read it. Have you, Akashi-kun?”
“Yes, I have. Just like his other works, extremely entertaining and fascinating,” acknowledged Akashi, sitting next to the bluenette. “Somehow, the book made me think about the time we spent at Teikou Middle School.”
“Teikou? Why?” asked Kuroko, tilting slightly his head as he put the straw of the milkshake in his mouth and started slurping on the cold drink.
“Well, the character’s names are similar to ours. There’s red (Aka), blue (Ao), white (Shiro), green (Midori) and even black (Kuro),” explained Akashi, a soft smile surfacing in his features as he intently observed Kuroko drinking his milkshake.
“That’s surprising,” commented the bluenette, his interest readily piqued at that information. “Now I really want to read the book. I guess I’ll stop by the bookstore on my way home today or go there tomorrow when I go out to meet with Kagami-kun.”
“If you’d like, I can borrow you mine. But it’s in Kyoto so you’ll have to wait until we meet next time,” volunteered Akashi, also starting to drink his own milkshake, the smile on his face widening slightly at the prospect of meeting with Kuroko on a later date.
“That would be nice of you. Ah, but since I really want to read it now, I don’t know if I’ll be able to abstain myself from buying it,” added the bluenette, a soft smile appearing on his features as he looked over to the taller male.
Books… Of course, it would be books…, mumbled Aomine in his head, rolling his eyes slightly as he continued to ignore the talking of the blonde (something about the farewell party that the basketball club from Kaijou did to the third years) and focused his gaze in a covert manner to the talking redhead and bluenette. They almost seemed to be on their own world, completely ignoring the other former teammates present in the room.
Suddenly, Akashi moved his red eyes in his direction and, to hide the fact that he had been observing them, the tanned male simply crawled over to the plastic bags that were still filled with delicious things for them to snack on during the afternoon. When he started rumbling through their insides, Aomine noticed something and took it out of the bag.
“Hey, Murasakibara, this is yours, right?” asked the tanned male, holding his hand high in the air while securing in it a large plastic bag of jelly beans. “I thought you said you were sick of eating these.”
“Ahh… That’s why I brought them…” explained the purple-haired giant, eating the potato chips from the bowl in quick succession. “I still have a lot of bags of jelly beans in Akita. You know, the ones Muro-chin received from America. That one is a limited edition, it seems, so I thought ‘why not bring it with me and make them feel sick of jelly beans too?’”
“Limited edition? What’s different about these?” asked Kise, perking up at the prospect of eating from limited-edition candies that came directly from America.
“I have absolutely no idea… The package is in English and I didn’t feel like asking Muro-chin to translate it for me,” answered the purple-haired male, shrugging his shoulders. “But they probably also have those weird looking jelly beans inside.”
“’Weird looking jelly beans’?” asked suddenly Akashi, an eyebrow slightly raised at the conversation the other males were having. Both Kuroko and he were now looking over in Aomine’s direction, who was still holding the bag with the jelly beans.
“Yeah, they are… suspicious,” simply confirmed Murasakibara, motioning his hand up to grab his cup and finish drinking his carbonated juice.
“If it’s Murasakibara who is saying that, they must be really weird,” added Midorima, adjusting his glasses while looking over in the jelly beans’ bag’s direction. “He has probably already tasted all kinds of snacks and candies that are available here in Japan and some of them are considerably dubious in terms of flavours.”
“Oh, I know! Why don’t we all try them?” suggested Kise, his face brightening with the idea. “And if we do it all at the same time, we can see each other’s reactions to the weird-looking jelly beans! It might be a fun game for us to do.”
“Eating something that Murasakibara-kun finds weird might be dangerous. Especially if it comes in a limited edition,” pointed out Kuroko, a little bit hesitant about his whole ‘fun game’ that the blonde was suggesting.
“I would usually think like that too, Tetsu, but it sure sounds interesting,” added Aomine, a smirk erupting in his face. He just had the perfect way to convince the others to play along with Kise’s idea. “If those weird-looking jelly beans have a very nasty flavour, I wonder what kind of face an expressionless guy like you would make~”
“Eh?” interjected the bluenette, looking with a surprised face to the tanned male. He then looked around to his other former teammates, a mischievous expression in every single one of them. “Ah… I-I’m not very fond of jelly beans…”
“Kuroko, this is a celebration,” started Akashi, a dark glint in his eyes as the smirk on his features widened considerably. “Playing one or two games won’t hurt us, right? And it seems that we’re all in agreement in regards to that. We live in a mainly democratic world so the majority will make the decisions in the end.”
“Kuroko, I’m sorry, but I’m really curious about that too,” backed up the green-haired male, a sort of evil glint in the eyes hidden behind the glasses.
“Yes, Kuro-chin, if one of us suffers from the weird-looking jelly beans, all of us have to suffer too,” added Murasakibara, picking up an empty bowl and motioning it forward to the tanned male, so he could dump all the jelly beans in it.
“I wonder what kind of expression of disgust will Kurokocchi make~” wondered Kise out loud, his smirk a mixture of shininess and revenge for the teasing that the bluenette had brought forward earlier.
“Tetsu, give it up,” added Aomine, opening the bag and softly spilling the candies inside of the bowl. “You have no way out of this now.”
“I’m starting to agree with Kise-kun. You’re all extremely mean,” tried to deadpan Kuroko but the demoralized look on his face completely ruined his chances of accomplishing it.
“Ahahahaha! Okay, let’s see what’s in here~” laughed the tanned male while looking inside of the bowl. There was indeed one type of jelly beans that didn’t match with the others. They must have been the weird-looking jelly beans, seeing as Murasakibara was also staring at them with slight disgust in his face. “Have you tried them before, Murasakibara?”
“No. Why would I?” answered the purple-haired giant, lunging his hand forward to grab one of the small ‘weird-looking’ jelly beans. “These little things may have a completely revolting flavour. I don’t want to ruin my like for jelly beans even more than Muro-chin already has.”
“So everybody in here is a ‘virgin’ to these type of jelly beans,” smirked the tanned male, motioning of his hand to the bowl so he could gather five more candies of that type for himself and the other participants of the little ‘game’. He then distributed them for the other males, doubt still painted in the bluenette’s face.
“Uwah~ They really do have a weird colour…” started Kise, turning the jelly bean around to observe it better. “I don’t even know what to call this colour. The format is sort of similar to the normal ones but the colour is indeed suspicious.”
“I told you…” added Murasakibara, still eyeing the small candy in his hand with disgust. It wasn’t only the colour that was making his stomach turn – it was also the fact that he had already eaten 5 bags (American sized) of jelly beans in the last few months that was making him feel somewhat sick.
“We should hurry up and eat them,” pointed out Midorima, also observing the small candy in between his fingers. “If we stall this indefinitely, the nasty flavour that this probably has will remain longer in our mouths.”
“Kuroko, turn more to this way,” requested Akashi, shifting his body slightly closer to the smaller male so he could observe him better. “If you stay in that position, we won’t all be able to see your expression of disgust when you eat it.”
“Akashi-kun, you’re making me feel like an abomination on display in a circus,” deadpanned Kuroko in an admonishing way (but moving slightly his body like he was being told). He then looked down at his hand and raised slightly an eyebrow. “Are we really going to do this?”
“Yup!” exclaimed Kise and Aomine at the same time, mischievous grins in their faces.
“Then at the count of three, we’ll all put the jelly beans in our mouths,” directed Akashi, turning his body slightly more in the bluenette’s direction. “And no cheating. I will know if you did.”
“Y-Yes…” conceded everyone in unison, feeling the threat reverberate inside of their bodies.
“Okay, then. Three… Two… One… Go!”
When the countdown came to an end, all of them threw the jelly bean into their mouth, crunching it with their teeth. All of them remained in silence while doing so, observing the expression on everybody’s faces.
“Eh?” interjected Kuroko softly, continuing to chew the jelly bean as an eyebrow started to perk up. “It’s… normal?”
“Yes, it’s normal. I don’t know which flavour it is but it doesn’t taste bad,” added the redhead, swallowing the candy.
“Well, isn’t this quite anticlimactic…” sighed Aomine, disappointment written all over his face. “And here was I thinking that I would finally get to see Tetsu make a funny face.”
“Let me see that bag they came in,” requested Midorima, adjusting his glasses while motioning his hand up to Aomine, who was the closest to the empty plastic package. After he took it in his hands, he started to read the information in English that was written in it. “Hm… They don’t say anything about the mysterious flavour of the weird-looking jelly beans, but…”
“But?” repeated Kise, peering over to see what was written in the bag. English was his strongest subject but there were still a lot of words in the package that he didn’t understand.
“’Your deepest wish will be granted by the means of… misfortune?’” suddenly said the green-haired male, a questioning look on his features as he looked over to the other males, their faces housing the same type of look that he had. “Well, that’s what’s written in here, at least.”
“Ugh… I have a feeling we just ate a very troublesome thing…” grunted Murasakibara, running his hand through his long purple locks of hair. “But well, at least it didn’t taste bad. It was pretty good, in a way. But after hearing that, I don’t think I’ll eat any more of the weird-looking ones. Actually, I won’t eat any more jelly beans for a while. Ugh…”
All of them laughed when they saw the purple-haired giant sticking out his tongue, an expression of disgust once again flashing in his features.
“Well, forgetting the weird foreshadowing bad luck that the bag announced, I think it was for the best that the flavour was considerably to our tastes,” added Kuroko, a soft smile still housed in his lips.
“I did want to see you making a nasty expression because of the flavour, though,” confessed Akashi, a smirk appearing on his face once again as he looked sideways to the smaller male. “Maybe I should start searching for ways to make that happen.”
“I’m sorry, Akashi-kun, but that will be impossible,” simply answered Kuroko, picking up once again his cup with the vanilla milkshake and putting the straw on his mouth to continue drinking it.
“Because you have a perpetual expressionless face on at all moments, no matter what happens?” teased the redhead further.
“No, because I don’t want to lose,” added the smaller male, a soft smirk suddenly perking his lips upwards.
“Really, the same Kuroko of always,” chuckled Akashi, motioning his hand forward to also continue drinking his milkshake.
But well… that’s what makes you so interesting, Kuroko, added the redhead inwardly, peering sideways to the other male as he chatted with Aomine in regards of meeting up with Kagami Taiga, the bluenette’s teammate, in the next following day.
-.-
[9 hours after the ending of the meeting – 5:30 AM]
Kise was so used to wake up at the same hour every morning that his body would automatically start working once again without needing any sort of alarm clock to achieve that end. He opened one of his golden eyes and peeked to his bedroom, a lot of things still thrown to some places in random ways, even though they all cleaned up the room after the meeting was closed and everyone left for their respective houses (with the exception of Murasakibara, who was currently sleeping in a futon beside his bed, and Akashi, who was going to stay in an hotel for the night to return to Kyoto in the Shinkansen the next day).
Still with sleepiness installed in his body, he motioned one of his hands and ruffled his hair, two fluffy unknown bulges in the sides of his head. A question mark floating around him, the blonde once again motioned his hand up and touched one of the bulges, feeling an itching sensation because of said action. However, he didn’t feel it in his hand. It was in the fluffy thing that he touched.
“Huh?” Kise suddenly motioned his body up to a sitting position and lunged his other hand up to touch the other bulge. Touching and feeling up the two fluffy things apparently attached to his head, he had a weird feeling of having felt it before… but not in a human being. “Eh!?”
In a single jump, the blonde got out of the bed and ran to the other side of his bedroom, where a big mirror had been put. He stopped in front of it, grabbing the sides with his hands to stop the momentum of the run, and observed his body from head to toes.
In between his messing blonde strands of hair were two golden and furry dog ears. He felt something considerably weighty in his lower back, just on top of his rear, and hesitantly started to turn his body around, always keeping his eyes on the mirror. Attached to his back and jutting out of his pants, was a fluffy golden tail.
“EH!? NO WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!” yelled Kise, in a completely state of panic. He motioned his hand up to his head and started pulling at the two ears attached to the top of his head, but all he got out of it was extreme pain – it was similar to the feeling of having his fingers or arms being pulled at. Tears in the corner of his eyes due to the sudden pull, he turned around and started running to the futon. “Murasakibaracchi! Help me! There’s something wrong with me rig— Eh? Murasakibaracchi?”
The blonde looked to the futon spread on the floor but saw it completely empty. Was it possible that the purple-haired giant had gone to the bathroom or something? He looked over to the door of his room but it was closed and he also didn’t remember hearing it being opened at all throughout the whole night.
“Ngh… What’s this noise all about…?” questioned a very tiny and acute voice. Kise looked back down to the futon and saw the fabric being slowly moved in the place where a small ball was placed. He observed with a flabbergasted expression as the ball moved up through the futon until a purple small thing appeared near the pillow. “Huh? Was the futon this big?”
“M-M-Murasakibaracchi…?” hesitantly called the blonde, peering down with his eyes completely open to a small (extremely small!) version of the purple-haired male.
“Eh?” Murasakibara moved his tiny head upwards and looked at the blonde with sleepy eyes. “Kise-chin, you got bigger…”
“N-No… You’re the one who got smaller…” corrected Kise. He then pointed at his head, more precisely, to the furry ears attached to the top of his head and asked to the small version of the purple-haired giant. “M-Murasakibaracchi… do you also see the dog ears in my head? And the tail in my back?”
“Yes. Why?” simply answered Murasakibara, rubbing slightly his eyes with his tiny hand. He suddenly stopped his movements and looked up to the blonde. “Eh?”
“Eh?” also interjected Kise, looking down to the doll-like size of the once gigantic male.
“EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!?” yelled the two males in unison (or better yet, the small scale version of a human being and the half human, half dog male).
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