Chapter Text
“Hey, Kuroko!”
Seirin had been collecting themselves before the start of their match against Shinkyo Academy when one of the Shinkyo bench warmers approached the Seirin bench.
Kagami looked towards his ‘shadow’. “You know this guy, Kuroko?”
“Hello. How have you been Ichijoji-kun?”
The medium height brunette gave the Phantom a cheerful nod.
“Pretty good, all things considered. Still not a regular, but I got pretty used to ridding the bench, you know?”
There was an awkward lull between the two as both teams watched the pair. The quiet boy with the childish figure sat on the bench with an unmoving face. The opposing player stood to the side of the Seirin bench with a hand rubbing the back of his neck.
“Look, I should apologize for my team. They don’t know, y’know? I don’t think I realized how much all the other schools thought you didn’t exist. Seemed kind of stupid to me at the time, I mean, you played in all the games after you moved up. Haha… ha.”
Kuroko responded with a bob of his head and a kind smile. “Thank you, though I take no offence. I learned a long time ago not to take sentiments disregarding me to heart. I think… you understand what really got under my skin.”
The Shinkyo player’s face fell.
“Yeah…. How are you holding up? We all missed you when you resigned from the team.”
That caught the Seirin players by surprise. Even Kuroko’s eyes widened at the statement.
“Haha, what? You didn’t seriously think none of us cared about you, did you Kuroko? You might be a weak overall player, but you were on Teiko’s first string for two years! Just cause the Generation of Miracles were your best friends didn’t mean the rest of us didn’t think of you as a friend!”
The Shinkyo bench startled. Mutters of ‘Teiko’, ‘First string’, and ‘Generation of Miracles’ floated around. The Seirin members couldn’t settle their eyes between the two somber players.
“I’m sorry, Ichijoji-kun. I was dealing with my own troubles at the time and didn’t consider how the rest of the team might have felt.”
With frantic waves of his hand, the other player returned Kuroko’s earlier smile. He turned his body to look at the court.
“We knew. Y’know, we heckled you a lot. Especially when you first got to the first string, but you’re one of them too. I can’t imagine it was easy. We knew everything with Aomine was probably hard enough on it’s own, but then the rest started to go and… well, we saw it coming.
I wanted to say thank you, actually. For holding out as long as you did.”
Ichijoji turned back towards Kuroko, but averted his eyes quickly to hide the moisture.
“For the weakest player on the court, you wound up having the strongest will out of all the miracles, huh? Coming to practice every day, staying after every day. You kept trying and trying to get better and get through to them. And somehow… somehow in between all of that you managed to find time to encourage players on all three of the strings.
You were the only one who played with us. Even when I’m sure it felt like your world was falling apart, you kept things together to lead the rest of us.”
There was growing shock on the Seirin players faces as Shinkyo grew more confused.
Kagami couldn’t hold himself back. “You wanna explain a bit more, buddy?”
The brunette in front of him chuckled.
“I don’t think it’s my story to tell. But hey, Kuroko, if you ever need people to vent to – you still got all the Teiko players numbers, right? I don’t know about the third or second string, but the first-string players from our year have open ears.
We couldn’t be there for you back then, but we’ll be here now if you’ll have us.”
Kuroko’s eyes widened for a moment before he gave a strong nod.
“Thank you…. I missed all of you, too.”
Ichijoji smiled at Kuroko before nodding and turning to head back to his bench.
“By the way, ‘honorary captain’, you’ve got yourself a guest. Resident tsundere at one o’clock.”
Kuroko couldn’t hold back his laugh.