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They figured it out too late because no one would ever accuse geniuses of being emotionally perceptive of anything outside of themselves.
It started with Murasakibara, Yosen’s Shield of Aegis buckling and breaking before any of them were even really aware of it. Araki-Coach was furious, of course, but even she could barely explain just what had happened. Because it was Murasakibara, he didn’t mention it to anyone else in the Generation, sulking in snacks and then Midorima’s Shuutoku had fallen, one of Tokyo’s 3 kings bowing to an Uncrowned King.
Or not.
When Midorima rang Akashi to bitch and pout about Oha Asa and his lucky item betraying him, apparently Hanamiya hadn’t even gotten off the damn bench and their Point Guard had faced off against a tiny first-year whelp with an unbelievable range of vision, supported by an implacable line-up of seniors who’d blocked Midorima's every attempt at a 3-pointer, forcing him to make desperate ploy in the 3rd quarter from the other side of the court.
Kirisaki Daiichi had stayed quiet and simmering throughout that quarter and Otsubo had led the attempt to reclaim the lead, but then Kirisaki had called for a time-out and just like that, the tides had turned yet again.
Kaijou had fallen next, the entire team beaten black-and-blue after their encounter with Kirisaki Daiichi’s Bad Boy. Even all of Kise’s wiles hadn’t allowed him to get off scot-free, and Moriyama had come up against a new Shooting Guard with incredible agility and a mysterious and more importantly, unstoppable, disappearing shot.
(If a Seirin freshman blanched once he heard that, never mind that his captain led their team in the opposite direction whenever Kirisaki was even mentioned…well, he wasn't a part of this story.)
Touou was next, in the Semifinals, narrowly missing a match-up against Rakuzan and drawing Kirisaki Daiichi instead. If anyone should’ve been able to stop them aside from Rakuzan, it should’ve been Touou with Aomine leading the offence, supported by Momoi and Imayoshi and the mind of Harasawa-Coach.
But then Momoi walked out on the team a week before their game, leaving them scrambling in her wake. She refused to talk to Aomine and only approached Imayoshi to apologise.
“I’m sorry, Imayoshi-san,” Momoi said, sounding genuinely apologetic as she bowed. “I wish things had turned out differently. I like this team, I really do, and I understand if you can’t trust me again after this.” Momoi sighed, weighed down by something she wouldn’t explain. Her voice was still sincere as she continued, “I wish Touou had drawn Rakuzan. I would’ve helped you destroy them.”
This was a side to his sweet little ex-manager he’d never seen before.
“Momoi-chan?”
“I’m really sorry, Imayoshi-san,” she repeated.
“Can we at least get your notes on them?”
She smiled at him faintly. “Imayoshi-san knows his junior better than I ever could.”
“But it’s not just Makoto-chan on the opposing bench,” he wheedled, not too proud to beg. His team was worth more than that.
Momoi’s smile turned more genuine. “I really do like you, Imayoshi-san, which is why I’m going to apologise again and tell you this was never about you, not really. You’ll never see it coming.”
When Imayoshi finally saw who was on the Kirisaki Daiichi bench, he swore and threw his hands up in the air, knowing this game was as good as lost before they’d even started. Before Touou had ended up with Aomine and Momoi, he had entertained the thought of scouting a 3rd Teikou member, having seen continuity in the game plays the Phantom 6th Player had made. But he'd been too good at staying hidden and Imayoshi had a limited budget, and Momoi and Aomine never talked about him or any of their old teammates, which ought to have been telling.
(Imayoshi and Hanamiya might have always been openly antagonistic towards each other, but they still met up like clockwork for a shogi match over drinks, alternating houses each month.)
He looked over his shoulder and saw Momoi’s bright pink head in the audience. Her expression was sympathetic but resolute; the time for apologies was over.
Aomine, the dumbfuck, didn't even notice his old partner until the ball was slapped clean out of his hands. The game spiralled sharply downhill after that.
…at least he got a cute little girlfriend out of this shit show.
(“It’s Kuroko- Tetsu, it’s Tetsu, for fuck’s sake, Akashi, what the fuck is going on?”)
No one would ever accuse geniuses of being emotionally perceptive.
Even after Daiki had called Akashi to screech in his ear, he still couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it until he saw their old teammate in Kirisaki Daiichi’s dark green jersey with Hanamiya’s arm casually slung over his shoulders. At least it looked casual to most outsiders; Akashi’s eyes saw more than that and he could recognise possessiveness when he saw it.
He knew the rest of the team now, too: Power Forward, Hara Kazuya; Small Forward, Furuhashi Kojiro; Centres Seto Kentaro and Matsumoto Itsuki; and Shooting Guard, Yamazaki Hiroshi.
Also: Point Guard, Takao Kazunari; Shooting Guard, Himuro Tatsuya; Point Guard, Captain, and Coach, Hanamiya Makoto; and…
Tetsuya.
He didn’t know if it was because of Hanamiya’s arm carelessly thrown over Tetsuya’s shoulders and just left there, but no one on the Kirisaki Daiichi team seemed to ever lose sight of him, still the smallest and shortest of the lot. Even after Hanamiya was called away, Tetsuya continued interacting with the rest of the team without ever missing a beat.
Akashi grit his teeth. He hated not knowing everything, but he didn’t see the point of a Phantom 6th Player who was visible. He had his Emperor’s Eye and Ankle Break. He had 3 Uncrowned Kings at his back and Mayuzumi Chihiro was adequate.
He had this.
(He really, really didn’t.)
Rakuzan fell.
High school basketball had a new champion.
“Regrets?” Makoto purred in his ear.
“You’re a year too late to ask me this, Makoto-kun,” Tetsuya murmured, leaning against the older boy’s broad chest with his feet in Tatsuya’s lap, Kazunari somehow curled up in the tight space between them, fast asleep.
“Also, I think you’re asking the wrong person, Makoto,” Tatsuya said, his one visible eye crinkling with amusement. He had been the last to join their motley crew, fresh from America and utterly untouched by Teikou’s long shadow. He’d also taken the longest to gel with the others, too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for their caustic jadedness.
But Tatsuya had been burnt before, too, even if he hid it better, and Kazunari had wheedled the age-old story of broken childhood friendships from him, and because Tetsuya only pretended to be a good person and Makoto had never bothered, they immediately went to Seirin High School to snoop, Makoto kicking up a storm and drawing all their attention while Tetsuya snuck around to his heart’s content.
“They really do hate you,” Tetsuya had murmured on the bus back to Makoto’s place.
Makoto rolled his eyes. “Does it look like I care? So they hate me. How the hell does that make them any different from half the teams in the league?”
Tetsuya snorted but he’d made his peace with this part of himself long ago, when the Generation of Miracles broke his heart and didn’t even stick around to see the pieces shatter.
“It’s personal for them,” he commented. “Teppei Kiyoshi-san, was it? The last of the Uncrowned Kings.” The other 3 were under Akashi in Rakuzan.
Makoto sneered. “He’s a pathetic lump.”
Tetsuya sighed, needling his head into Makoto’s shoulder, but he didn’t say anything more on that. “Aida-san is quite formidable. It’s moments like this where I miss Momoi-san.”
(He wouldn’t know it yet, but a year on, he would have Momoi firmly back in his corner, Imayoshi with her for the joyride, her keen eyes unable to overlook the deterioration of old relationships. It would hurt in the interim, but this was better for all of the Generation in the long run, not that Momoi was holding out for thanks from those 5 ingrates.)
Makoto growled, teeth nipping his ear. “What am I, chopped liver?”
Tetsuya shivered but managed to pat his Makoto’s thigh with a hand that barely shook. “You’re more than your liver, Makoto-kun.”
Makoto gnashed his teeth beside his face but Tetsuya only chuckled, curling up against the lankier boy. “Kagami-kun has talent, but even Aida-san can’t pull miracles out of nothing. Teppei-san is the team’s anchor, but both she and Hyuuga-san are too scared to push him.”
“He’s still in rehab,” Makoto said, almost clinical since Tetsuya was the only one present. “Given Aida’s prognosis, he won’t make in back in time for this season.”
Tetsuya shook his head. “Seirin won’t be a concern. Kagami-kun needs someone to temper and balance him and there’s no one on their team who can do that right now. I am planning to keep an eye on him, for Himuro-kun’s sake (Tatsuya-kun had still been Himuro-kun then), if nothing else.”
Kazunari stirred and pressed his face into his belly, bringing Tetsuya back to the present.
“You’re thinking too loudly,” he mewled, stretching his arms out to loop them around Tetsuya's waist and Makoto's, behind him. Makoto scoffed, but he was limber and lax against the sofa arm.
Tetsuya rolled his eyes and gently pet Kazunari’s hair. “My thinking too loudly is what got us to this point.”
Makoto sniffed his disdain. Admittedly, this time last year Tetsuya had been in a god-awful place, hollow-eyed and on the brink of- well, nothing good. But then Makoto had showed up at Teikou, the first one in months who’d looked at him and seen him, all of him, even the parts of himself he’d hidden for years, all the seething resentment and bitterness he’d choked down, and the rest was history.
Makoto had seen all of him, had just known. He never hid the fact that he wanted Tetsuya and his basketball – but he’d wanted all of him, including his pathetic stamina and deeply-buried pettiness, not just his Misdirection or keen sense of the game. He’d seen it all and for the first time, Tetsuya felt like he hadn’t been found wanting; he’d been wanted instead.
Makoto had been the first, but he’d come with Kazuya, Kojiro, Kentaro, Itsuki, and Hiroshi, who treated him as a bit of a cross between a little brother and a pet, teasing and cajoling and playful. What he’d been most surprised by was their lack of interest in basketball.
The team at Teikou had lived, breathed, ate, and shat basketball. Not to say the Kirisaki team weren’t as committed in their own way, but they drew a clear line between training time and their lives.
“Of course we do, you idiot,” Makoto had scoffed once he’d gathered up the courage to ask. “Basketball isn’t life.”
That simple statement had wrecked the tattered remnants of his crumbling world view. The trade-off – that he stop burying his burnt bitter edges and sharpen them instead – was eminently worth it.
Tetsuya had brought Kazunari with him, both of them small-built game makers who saw far too much. Kazunari’s school had been completely destroyed by Teikou in the top-16, and Tetsuya was a little ashamed that he didn’t even remember it, had completely blanked when Kazunari had come to Teikou with his Eagle Eye looking for answers but found him instead.
Kirisaki hadn’t recruited him, but its entrance exam could hardly give someone at his level of intellect pause and Makoto was too greedy not to take advantage of another vicious, wounded talent. Maybe Kazunari would have eventually clawed his way out of the wretched grief Teikou had sunk him into all on his lonesome, but with Tetsuya, with Makoto, with the rest of the Kirisaki team - he didn’t have to.
Tatsuya had waltzed through Kirisaki Daiichi’s gates on a whim, could have just as easily attended Yosen if his parents hadn’t decided to move to Tokyo instead, and he and Makoto had fought for a whole fortnight over the morality (or lack thereof) of the Spider’s Web.
There had been something about the…nobility with which Tatsuya regarded basketball that had soothed him as much as irked him, so Tetsuya had taken it upon himself to take him aside before Kojiro lost his patience and shanked Tatsuya, and told him very quietly about Teikou, about how there was more to life than basketball, and that if he didn’t get his head out of his arse Tetsuya would shank him himself because he liked Tatsuya, he did, but he was getting obnoxious.
Tatsuya had fallen into the fold very quickly after that. And if Makoto got irritated and Tatsuya smirky when people started comparing them, Kirisaki’s twin pretty bad boys, Tetsuya just laughed and took it upon himself to distract Makoto before he turned his violent tendencies towards his teammates.
“What now?” Tatsuya asked, kneading his ankles.
He glanced behind his shoulder to meet Makoto’s eyes and then looked back at Tatsuya with a smile. He could feel Makoto’s own smile (more of a smirk, really) pressed against the nape of his neck, the weight and warmth of Kazunari in his lap.
“We savour our win. And then we go back and start training for next year, and do it all over again.”