Kagami carefully, but not that softly, dropped his belongings to the bench in the middle of the locker room used by the basketball club during practice. He immediately opened his school bag and took from inside Murasakibara’s tiny version.
“Ugh… You should try to be nicer to me…” complained Murasakibara, his head spinning around due to the motions he had been subjected to while inside of the dark and quite stuffy school bag. “You have a quite violent way of walking, Kagami…”
“Shut it!” grumbled Kagami, putting the purple-haired male on top of the bench and then turning around to arrange his things on the locker that had been assigned to him when he joined the basketball team. “You should be glad that I even brought you along with me. I’ll warn you beforehand, Murasakibara… Be careful or you might get eaten by Nigou.”
“Nigou doesn’t have the habit of eating random things, Kagami-kun,” pointed out a sudden soft voice, right beside the redhead.
“Whoa, Kuroko!!” yelped Kagami, unconsciously slamming the locker’s door closed with the scare that the out-of-the-blue appearance of the bluenette had caused in him. That sure was something that didn’t happen in quite a while. “When did you get here?”
“I was already in the locker room when you too came inside,” explained Kuroko while finishing adjusting his training clothes for the first basketball practice of that school year. “I even greeted you, Kagami-kun.”
“Yeah, well… Sorry ‘bout that…” apologized Kagami, feeling slightly bad for the smaller male. They had known each other for basically one year now and he still couldn’t see the bluenette at first glance most of the time. Misdirection sure had its downsides, he had come to realize, but coming off as unseen even by his own teammates? He could only pity Kuroko from time to time due to his natural lack of presence.
“Kuro-chin, are you feeling better?” asked Murasakibara, who had settled himself in the bench on a sitting position. “Are you actually well enough to come to school already?”
“Yes, I’m fine, Murasakibara-kun. Thank you for worrying about me,” answered Kuroko, turning his head over in the tiny male’s direction and giving a quick, soft smile to him.
“Was it because of your curse?” innocently asked Murasakibara, his head a little bit tilted to the left as he looked up to the bluenette.
“…!” Kuroko’s whole body visibly shook at that question. He remained completely silent for a couple more of seconds, swallowing hard the big lump that had formed in his throat due to the plainly embarrassing and both physically and mentally exhausting things that had happened in a single day of his life. “Have you decided on how you will return to Akita, Murasakibara-kun?”
“Yeah, Muro-chin will come today in the afternoon to Tokyo to get me,” sighed Murasakibara, a sulking expression on his tiny features. “Until then, I guess I will have to hang out with you, Kuro-chin. And Kagami, since the meeting spot with Muro-chin is in his house…”
So misdirection can also be applied to conversations, huh…, inwardly pointed out Kagami, looking sideways to the bluenette as he started getting changed to his training clothes. He could only wonder how many times he had already fallen for the exact same trick… and the thought alone was making him slightly annoyed at the smaller male.
“It’s totally a bad thing that is about to come our way!” sounded a voice from the other side of the locker room’s door. Soon, the door opened to show Koganei Shinji and Mitobe Rinnosuke.
Hurriedly, Kagami grabbed the tiny purple-haired male and slammed him inside of his locker, pushing him against the towels he had there to muffle his complaints about that sudden “mistreatment”.
“Hey, Kagami, Kuroko! How’s it going?” cheerfully greeted Koganei, Mitobe beside him giving a quick bow with his head.
“Good morning, Koganei-senpai, Mitobe-senpai,” greeted back Kuroko, also giving a quick bow with his head as he tried to not roll his eyes over the redhead’s clumsy actions to hide the purple-haired male. Luckily everyone in the basketball club knew that Kagami had weird quirks every now and then.
“Yeah, ‘morning, Senpai,” also greeted Kagami, pushing the purple-haired male more strongly against the towel while throwing him a sideways glare to silently order him to stay put and be extremely quiet while inside of the locker.
“Have you seen Riko when you got here?” asked Koganei, stopping in front of his locker and opening it so he could change his clothes to get ready for the morning practice.
“Coach? No, I haven’t,” answered Kagami, finally withdrawing his arm from the locker’s insides and taking a peek to the bluenette, who also shook his head in denial. “Did something happen with her?”
“Nope. Something is about to happen to us,” explained Koganei, a sudden shudder running down his spine at the past almost traumatizing events that they had to go through when something similar happened. “We just passed by her and she… she was skipping.”
“…!” Kagami’s whole body froze completely at hearing that word appearing in the same sentence as Aida Riko’s name, his face unusually pale and lifeless. He took another peek to the bluenette, who remained with the usual expressionless face as always, but his body fidgeted just the slightest as he finished organizing his things inside of his locker.
Aida Riko skipping around through the school grounds was always terrible news for them. However, he had an exceptionally bad feeling about what it would be this time around. A really bad feeling.
-.-
All third and second-year members of Seirin High School’s boy basketball club were chatting with each other inside of the gym, talking about the most diverse of subjects, though all of them always lead to basketball at some point. When a whistle resounded through the big building, all of them quieted down and looked over to the arriving female coach, Aida Riko.
“Good morning, guys!” greeted Riko, a huge smile on her face. She dropped her whistle, which remained around her neck due to the cord attached to it, and tapped the clipboard being held by her right hand on her left one. “It’s great to find you all here. Not that I didn’t expect it. Today it’s the first day of the new school year and we will need to start hunting for first years. However, that will only happen next week."
“What? Why?” asked Hyuuga Junpei, an eyebrow slightly arched at hearing those words. He, Riko and Izuki had planned to start searching for new members for the basketball club that very same week, if not on that day itself. When the glasses-wearing male saw the mischievous smirk that appeared in the brunette’s face at his question, all of the players there shuddered.
“Because from today’s afternoon practise until the end of this week, which means Saturday, we will hold a joint practice with another basketball team,” explained Riko, her voice almost singing those words with the excitement she felt since the unexpected phone call that she received the previous night had ended. “Prepare yourselves, Seirin! I expect you to defeat Rakuzan High’s basketball team in all of our games against them!”
“Rakuzan? You’re kidding me, right?” asked Izuki Shun, his mouth open with shock at that sudden arrangement that he had no knowledge of beforehand. “Aren’t they from Kyoto? Why are they coming from there to Tokyo?”
“I don’t know,” answered Riko, giving a quick shrug with her shoulders. “But isn’t this a great opportunity? We get to practice with three Uncrowned Kings and one member of the Generation of Miracles for a week. How lucky can we get?”
Gulping down hard, Kagami slowly turned his face to the bluenette standing beside him. Kuroko’s face remained the most neutral possible at hearing that unexpected joint practice with the last person that he most likely would want to have around during such a setting. However, he knew very well that the smaller male was nearing a panic attack as we speak. He might not show it in his face, but Kagami knew him well enough to sense the huge wave of dismay that the bluenette felt right now.
“So that’s it, guys,” continued Riko, her eyes peering over to the clipboard. “This morning practice will be the same regiment as last school year but in the afternoon we will receive Rakuzan and schedule with them our incoming regiment for this whole week. Any questions?”
“Um… Riko-san?” started Kuroko, raising his hand in the air. “Due to health reasons, I will not be able to come to basketball practice this whole week. I would like to request time off.”
“Are you sick or did you get any injury during school break?” asked Riko, a smile on her face as she looked over to the bluenette.
“No, I’m not sick or injured,” answered Kuroko, taking a step backwards when the brunette started walking over in his direction.
“Do you have any paper from a doctor stating that you are with a current physical condition that doesn’t enable you to come to the practices?” asked further Riko, a smile still present on her lips as she stopped right in front of the bluenette.
“No, I don—“ started answering Kuroko but he suddenly found himself on the floor, a headlock being performed on his body by the female coach. “Ah… R-Riko…san… Please… wait…!”
“What do you mean you want time off right now, Kuroko-kun?” admonished Riko, tightening her hold on the bluenette’s body. “We need you in the joint practice to have a chance of winning against Akashi Seijuurou’s Emperor Eye and the three Uncrowned Kings! So don’t start spewing jokes like that one which will make me headlock you!!”
“C-Coach, you’re going to kill him before that time arrives,” warned Kagami as he observed the bluenette’s features get redder and redder due to lack of oxygen on his body.
“N-No… Please… kill me…” requested Kuroko with considerable difficulty due to the way his body was being twisted around by the small but extremely strong female. When his body was suddenly released, he fully slumped down on the floor, panting hard to restore all the air that was currently very scarce on his respiratory system.
“Are you okay, Kuroko?” asked Kagami, crouching down near the panting bluenette. Kuroko did try to lift his hand and do a thumbs up, but his limb readily fell back to the floor. The redhead had a suspicion that he wasn’t reacting like this because of the headlock. “U-Um… Coach, I think that Kuroko really is dying right now…”
“Eh!? I didn’t headlock him with all that much strength!” yelped Riko right away, hurriedly walking back to near the sprawled on the floor bluenette and then crouching down next to the redhead. “A-Are you okay, Kuroko-kun? We need you so you can’t just die because of a headlock!”
“I think your announcement killed him more than your headlock…” mumbled Kagami under his breath. When the brunette looked over at him with a lost expression on her face, he awkwardly cleared his throat and motioned his hands to the smaller male, circling his waist with one of his arms and grabbing into his scrawny arm with the other so he could pull him up. “I’ll take him to the locker room so he can rest for a little bit.”
“Sure. When he returns to his usual self, come back, the both of you,” acknowledged Riko while also nodding her head at it. She then turned around to the other players, all of them with a worried expression as they saw the two males walk away. “Meanwhile, you guys! Let’s stop slacking off and start working!”
As he carried pretty much dead weight on the side of his body, Kagami heard his teammates loudly acknowledge the orders being told by the female coach. As they exited the gym and started motioning back to the locker room, he looked down to the bluenette. “Are you feeling okay, Kuroko?”
“I’ll survive… unfortunately…” feebly answered Kuroko, already starting to move his legs more freely to help the redhead carry his weight. “Though I think it won’t be a very long life extension.”
“But won’t it be a good thing for you?” asked Kagami, coming to a halt in the middle of the corridor that led to the locker room, the door further ahead of them. “If Akashi is around, you’ll have more chances to confess to him, right?”
“No, it’s the exact opposite, actually,” corrected Kuroko, adjusting his training clothes slightly due to both the headlock and dragging around that he had been subjected to. “If Akashi-kun is near me, that will happen. So having to do a week-long joint practice with his team will be impossible for me. I will die before I manage to confess to him. I don’t even know if I can see him from afar after yesterday’s phone call.”
“Phone call?” repeated Kagami, an eyebrow slightly arched at hearing the bluenette’s words. “He called you after he took you home? Why didn’t you use that opportunity to confess to him, then?”
“With the topic of our conversation, it was virtually impossible to confess,” answered Kuroko, a forced blank demeanour on his face.
“Why? Did you have a dirty talk with him?” teasingly asked Kagami, a sly smirk on his features. When he saw the bluenette’s face explode in a myriad of shades of red and then hurriedly crouch down on the floor to hide it, the smirk was completely wiped out of his lips. “Eh? Seriously? I was right on this one?”
“Please leave it at that, Kagami-kun,” beckoned Kuroko, feeling his face currently burning like a furnace. “I simply don’t know what I should do… I guess my only option right now is to transfer to another school or, worst-case scenario, move to another country.”
“Geez, you’re blowing this out of proportion,” sighed Kagami, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning his back on the wall beside the crouched down bluenette. “You like Akashi, right? So I guess it’s normal to get turned on by him. You don’t really need to spend the rest of your life hiding from him just because of it. It’s a totally normal thing for a 16 years old male.”
“I don’t think you really understand my curse, Kagami-kun,” mumbled Kuroko, slowly lifting his head out of near his knees. “I don’t get turned on by having Akashi-kun around or hearing his voice… I get massively turned on. The crippling type of turned on. The—“
“The ‘I-want-to-get-in-your-pants-asap-even-if-we-are-in-a-bathroom-of-a-café-or-in-the-middle-of-a-basketball-practice-game’ type of turned on?” interrupted Kagami, once again a small smirk on his lips. He felt bad for the bluenette over this whole curse business. He truly did. But it was sort of amusing to see the usually expressionless and deadpan male actually panicking over such a teenager-like problem (even if in augmented proportions).
Kuroko groaned loudly and heavily slammed his face back on his knees.
“…Yes… That type of turned on…”
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