Panting desperately, Midorima stopped beside the main gate of Shuutoku High, the side of his body leaned on the wall as he tried to regain enough strength on his legs to walk. He took a deep breath and adjusted his substitute glasses (his usual pair was currently on top of his desk on his bedroom, waiting to be taken to the optician and get fixed – his younger sister had accidentally sent a toy to his face and the already existing crack there basically made the lenses explode with the impact).
This morning’s walk to school had been, literally, Hell for the green-haired male. As soon as he stepped outside of his house, a bird flying in the sky at that moment released its biological waste on top of his head, which forced him to go back inside to get cleaned. While walking on the street, following the map he had created with the safest route to his school, he dropped his cell phone on the ground and it got ran over by a motorcycle. As he picked up the remnants of the electronic device, a dog started running in his direction and furiously pursued him until he managed to hide in a park. Apparently, he shared his hiding location with an extremely angry cat that got his school uniform to the gloriously ripped stage that it currently had.
So right now, Midorima Shintarou was tired, covered in dirt and leaves… and in a really bad mood.
Midorima released one more loud and extremely exasperated sigh and departed his body from the wall, fully entering in the school grounds and doing his very best to ignore the weird looks he was receiving from the other students due to his appearance. Midorima quickly strode to the shoe lockers and dropped his heavy school bag on the wooden flooring, motioning his hand forward to take his indoor shoes out of the locker.
“S-Shin-chan, what the heck happened to you!?” yelped Takao as soon as he saw the taller male while he was crossing that area in search, truth to the told, of the student that he was now looking at with a shocked expression.
“…” Midorima straightened his back and looked over to the raven-haired male, quickly adjusting his glasses afterwards before once again motioning down to put his shoes on. “Some circumstances prevented me from having my usually peaceful morning walk to school.”
“Did you not find your lucky item of the day for some reason?” hurriedly asked Takao, walking over to near the green-haired male. He knew very well what were the effects of Midorima not having the lucky item indicated by Oha Asa – he would experience extreme bad luck when he didn’t have that sometimes ridiculous object with him, for as unbelievable as it may sound. However, even when he had a hard time to find the said item, the green-haired male had never looked this pitiful until he managed to get it.
“No, I have my lucky item right here,” said Midorima, pointing with his tapped index finger to the little flower pot made of rubber laid inside of the shoe locker as he worked his way around on putting his last indoor shoe.
“Then what happened?” asked Takao, switching his gaze from the lucky item to the green-haired male once again. When the taller male remained silent at his question and simply finished putting his shoes on, he had a feeling that it was somewhat related to the messages they had exchanged the previous night. “Shin-chan, is it related to you not wanting me to go pick you up in the morning? You said you had to talk to me about it the soonest you could with me.”
“I-I did not say it had to be soonest I can!” corrected Midorima, a soft shade of pink on his cheeks as he turned his face the other way so he could hide his expression from Takao. “I do have to talk with you but it can be done whenever I feel like i—“
A sudden eerie noise of metal scrapping on a hard surface interrupted Midorima as he was talking. When Midorima looked sideways, he only had time to push Takao and himself out of the wooden flooring and fully into the corridor before the lockers on the opposite side of his own heavily fell on top of the place where they had been standing.
“Uwah… That was a close one…” mumbled Takao, his heart thundering on his chest at the near-death experience that both of them had just experienced. “Thanks, Shin-chan~ Is this what you experience when you don’t have your lucky items with you? But… You have yours right now. What the heck is going on?”
“…” Midorima adjusted his glasses, his face slightly paler than usual, and cleared his throat softly. “I-It seems that having that conversation right now may come in handy to prevent future disasters… Come, Takao!”
“E-Eh? Shin-chan? What’s going on?” asked Takao when the green-haired male suddenly grabbed his arm and started pulling him along through the corridor, leaving behind the fallen shoe locker. To not just being straight out hauled around by Midorima, he quickly picked up his pace and followed along with him, his arm never released by the strong grip. “Shin-chan, what’s the matter?”
“Just be quiet for now,” shortly said Midorima, quickly climbing the stairs to the upper floors of the school building. In his face was present a serious demeanour.
If he wanted to finish this with one blow, he had to find a place inside of the school grounds where nobody would interrupt them and where none of them could be a possible victim to his curse. Taking every classroom and division of that building into consideration, as well as the proximity to their current location, Midorima continued to silently pull Takao with him as he climbed the stairs until the very top, so they could reach the door that gave access to the rooftop.
On that small space, there would be no one, since it was almost time for the classes to start, and there was nothing that could fall on top of them or any other deadly object around. They would be near the stairs, but if they positioned themselves near the door, which he would need to certificate himself that it was well closed, they wouldn’t be under the risk of falling down the stairs and possibly break a leg or, worse yet, their necks.
Once they reached the top of the staircase, Midorima came to a halt and put Takao near the door, which he carefully checked to make sure that it wouldn’t suddenly open and crash against them while he was talking. After that possible danger was taken off of his mind, he looked around to see if there was anything lying around on the floor, forgotten by a student.
“Um… Shin-chan?” hesitantly called Takao, an eyebrow slightly arched as he observed the green-haired male searching around on the floor by something that he seemed to not find and felt actually satisfied for it to be that way. “Ah… When are you going to start saying whatever it is that you want to tell me?”
Midorima straightened his back and turned around, walking back to near Takao. He intently looked to the smaller male and then adjusted his glasses, averting his gaze when a light shade of pink once again popped up in his cheeks. “Well, I guess I should start explaining it from the beginning. I met with my former teammates this weekend, as you know.”
“Oh yeah, you did say something about it when I texted you during the weekend,” acknowledged Takao, remembering about that event now that the green-haired male was bringing it up.
“Yes, exactly. So, during the gathering, we accidentally brought an extremely troublesome situation to all six of us, some in worse ways than the others,” continued explaining Midorima, still not making eye contact with Takao. “We… We sort of got… cursed…”
“Eh? Cursed?” repeated Takao, his mouth gaping slightly at those words. Was Midorima trying to pull a prank on him? No, he is a tsundere so it would be highly unlikely that he would try to do such a thing. Then, was this really…? “Y-You say you’ve been cursed but… How?”
“We ate some jelly beans and have been cursed by them,” shortly explained Midorima, a sour look appearing on his face at his own words. He could have contested about Kise’s idea of eating the jelly beans as a game played due to the gathering… but the prospect of seeing the usually expressionless Kuroko make a nasty expression made him sort of curious. How much he regretted it right now.
“Pffft… Wait! J-Jelly beans? Buwahahahahahahahaha!” Takao burst into laughter out of the blue, his arms clutching at his stomach as his back was slightly bent forward. “S-Shin-chan, that’s a joke, right? Ahahahaha! You six got cursed with… jelly beans? Ahahahahahaha!”
“I’m not joking right now!” insisted Midorima, getting irked at the amusement that Takao was displaying at his current extremely distressful situation. “You saw what happened near the lockers, didn’t you? That was because of my curse! I’ve been carrying my lucky item with me at all times since the gathering has ended but I’ve almost been killed so many times since then that I have lost count!”
“S-So your ‘curse’ nullifies the effectiveness of lucky items and amplifies the bad luck you have when you don’t have them with you?” asked Takao, trying to control his laughter inside once again. But when he saw the huge frown that appeared in Midorima’s face, he couldn’t help but break down into another laugh attack. “Ahahahahahaha! Shin-chan, even if you tell me something like that… Ahahaha! I can’t really seem to believe you! I mean… it’s so ridiculous! Getting curse by jelly beans? Ahahahahahahahaha!”
“You want more proofs about the curse?” asked Midorima, motioning his hand to his school bag and taking from there a piece of paper. While he was preparing to face a day in school while cursed, he certified himself that he had a printed photo of Kise with his ears and tail since he was very well aware of how unbelievable his words may sound to someone who wasn’t fully knowledgeable of the whole situation. He turned the photo around and put it in front of the smaller male’s face. “Here’s a photo of Kise with Murasakibara! His curse is to have dog ears and tail. Murasakibara is right beside him and, as you can see, he’s almost of the size of a soda can right now. Akashi is talking in a maddening way using idioms left and right and Aomine thinks he’s a girl. I don’t really know what Kuroko’s curse is but his health is probably affected by it since he actually passed out when we met yesterday. Do you believe me now!?”
“Oh shit…” Takao once again stopped laughing and motioned his hand forward, grabbing the photo and more closely analyzing it with his well-honed eyes. “This… is not photoshopped, right?”
“It clearly isn’t,” answered Midorima while adjusting his glasses and then finally looked over to the raven-haired male, whose amusement had now completely disappeared from his face. It seemed that he was finally understanding that this ‘ridiculous’ situation was as real as the bad luck usually caused by the absence of his lucky item of the day.
“Then you are really under the risk of being killed due to your extreme bad luck?” asked Takao, lifting his eyes from the photo and peering over to the taller male. When he saw him simply nodding his head at it and once again averting his gaze, Takao couldn’t help but gulp down hard. “How do you break this curse, then? There must be some sort of method to do it, right? Is there something I can do to help you, Shin-chan? You and the other five, of course.”
“I doubt you can help them but I guess that, for some completely absurd reason, you can help me,” sighed Midorima, his cheeks once again flushing slightly while he sideways glanced to the smaller male.
“Eh? I don’t really understand,” said Takao, his brows lightly frowning with incomprehension. “Why can I help you but not your former teammates? Are you trying to monopolize the great help of Kazunari-sama~?”
“That’s not it, you fool!” admonished Midorima, his blush darkening even more. He clumsily adjusted his glasses and took a step forward in Takao’s direction. “I have to do this in order to break the curse. I-It’s only because of the curse that I will say this! I had absolutely no plans of ever doing this before, okay? But don’t go misunderstanding my words just because I’m being forced to say it either. I mean it when I say it… even if I really dislike it.”
“You’re confusing me even more with all this babbling, Shin-chan…” sighed Takao, not understanding why Midorima sounded so panicky right now. It wasn’t like he would have to kill him to break the curse – if he had, he wouldn’t have protected him from the falling shoe locker earlier. What could be so hard to say that was making the stone-faced Midorima Shintarou so nervous that his speech was getting all bundled up?
“I… I’m…” hesitantly started Midorima, the red hue on his cheeks getting so accentuated that it could be seen even with the glasses positioned on the bridge of his nose. To gain the courage to spit those words out and end once and for all his life-threatening curse, he gulped down hard and released the air that had unconsciously been kept locked inside of his lungs. “T-Takao, I’m in l—“
The school bell started ringing all of a sudden, signalizing that first period was going to start and completely cutting off the sound of the green-haired male’s voice. A frown on his face, Midorima looked up and saw that one of the school bell system’s signal devices was on the wall next to them, right above their heads.
“Ah, sorry, Shin-chan. I couldn’t hear you because of the bell,” apologized Takao, observing the down-casted expression in the taller male’s features. “Can you repeat it again?”
“Never mind,” grudgingly said Midorima, adjusting his glasses and stepping away from near the raven-haired male. Then he started walking to the stairs, a big frown on his face. “I’ll talk with you in the next break. Let’s go to the classroom for no—“
The green-haired male’s voice was once again interrupted when he reached the stairs and his foot missed the correct position to land on the first step, making his large body fall down on the floor and slid down through the lance of stairs to the floor below just like he was motioning down a slide. Only this slide, in particular, was extremely painful and completely unorthodox for a human body.
“S-Shin-chan!?” yelped Takao, motioning down the stairs right away to tend to the fallen male on the floor connected to that entrance of the rooftop. He crouched down next to the green-haired male and helped him to a straight sitting position. “Are you okay?”
“I will so totally kill Murasakibara for this…” grumbled Midorima as he tried to shake the dust out of his ripped uniform. “Kise and Aomine too since they were the ones who suggested to play that game… Akashi and Kuroko are on that list too since Akashi was the one who suggested the gathering and convinced Murasakibara to come, and Kuroko was the reason why the game sounded so appealing… Yes, I will finish them off before they have a chance to break their curse… Hehehe…”
Observing as the green-haired male continued to mumble to himself, Takao got at a complete loss of what he should do about this whole ‘jelly bean’s curse’. “W-What am I supposed to do now? S-Shin-chan has completely snapped…”
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