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Iwamura strides out of the squat building that houses their cram school. The strap of his messenger bag sits high on his shoulder. His gaze is fixed on a point straight ahead. He walks past Ryuuhei, past the group of students debating on whether or not one’s successes in high school should be used as a marker for true intelligence, past the group tentatively suggesting to each other that they just skip the exams, since a university education is overrated anyway, past the ones complaining about how hungry they are and how they could really do with a gigantic, juicy burger right about now. He doesn’t stop until he reaches the intersection, where the pedestrian light is fixed on red.
Ryuuhei jogs up to him and says, “Hey.”
Iwamura turns his head, raises his eyebrows, replies, “You skipped today’s session, Kasuga.”
“Yeah, I guess I did, didn’t I?” Ryuuhei smiles. “Sorry, sorry. I had some other things to do.”
As expected, Iwamura doesn’t inquire about the nature of those “other things.” He would have if Ryuuhei had skipped basketball practice. He might have, if they were having this conversation right after they graduated from the Seihou High Basketball Club, would have delivered a platitude on how one must approach all areas of life with dedication, discipline, and honor.
It is December now. The university entrance exams are next month, and graduation from high school soon after. By this time next year, Kasuga Ryuuhei will be a fond memory that is receding into the back of Iwamura’s mind, to eventually be tucked into the box containing other memories of Seihou High, of high school basketball.
Ryuuhei says, “I stopped by the gym today. During afternoon practice.”
“Unnecessary,” Iwamura replies. “Tsugawa will learn how to run practice efficiently soon enough.”
The light switches to green. The shape of Iwamura’s shadow stretches towards the crosswalk, bulky under the bright streetlights. Almost solid, tangible around the edges. Like you can reach out and fit your fingers around the arm, the elbow, and trust him to carry you through any hurdle.
“Maybe so,” Ryuuhei says, falling into step behind him. He fixes his position so that he is back on Iwamura’s right, like he used to be when on the bench between quarters, on the bleachers when analyzing the games of their opponents, on the sidewalk when walking as a team. “But still. Come by sometime, yeah?”
Iwamura gives a noncommittal grunt. Ryuuhei hesitates a moment before patting him on the back. Just two quick pats. Iwamura does not welcome roughhousing, not like their adorable kouhai Tsugawa.
“Thanks,” Ryuuhei says, and Iwamura gives him a surprised glance, like he does not understand the gratitude in Ryuuhei’s tone.
They part ways at the next intersection.
***
Ryuuhei walks into Seihou’s gymnasium again the next afternoon. The coach has stepped out for a meeting, so Ryuuhei decides to stay for awhile, watch the new point guard - a smart second year reserve by the name of Takahashi, who keeps chewing on his lower lip and shaking his head - and the rest of the basketball team practice their dribbling and their Nanba running technique. It is strange to see Tsugawa as captain of the club, standing on the sidelines with a clipboard, in the spot Iwamura used to occupy. He doesn’t have Iwamura’s charisma or vocal power, and he really shouldn’t let Ryuuhei loiter around the gym, but, overall, he is doing a pretty good job at holding the team together. The second years have stopped giving him a hard time, and he manages to insult only one teammate within the first ten minutes of practice.
When Iwamura fails to show up, Ryuuhei heads out for a stroll around town. He likes taking long walks in the evenings and at nighttime, watching people under the glow of the streetlights and the bright flashes of the digital billboards as they shift from their daytime personas into their more relaxed, or more alive, nighttime selves. The soft smells of dinner emanating from the ramen stands and restaurants, mixing in with the cold winter breeze, wafting through the crowds. Back in junior high, if basketball practice wasn’t running late, he would spend these hours at video arcades or at the theaters. He can’t do that this year because his parents will be displeased if they hear that he is skipping cram school for gaming and movies. Walking around Tokyo is a far better alternative.
Ryuuhei has just finished crossing a busy intersection when he finds himself near Kimura Groceries. He sees two familiar figures perched on the empty bike rack in front of the small shop. He walks over to them.
“Hey,” he says.
Kimura nods once in acknowledgment, but Miyaji says, with a little sneer, “What brings you to our end of Tokyo, Number 5?”
“It’s Kasuga, actually,” Ryuuhei says, smiling. “I was just in the area and saw you two. Thought I’d say hi.”
“How thoughtful,” Miyaji replies.
Both Miyaji and Kimura are wearing their school uniforms, but they must have been at basketball practice earlier. Shutoku has made it to the Winter Cup. Ryuuhei slides his hands into the pockets of his jacket, asks, “How is your Miracle doing? I hope you have someone in your club who’s up to the task of managing him after you graduate.”
Miyaji glowers as he replies, “We’re the only ones allowed to talk shit about him. You jealous that your team didn’t have its own Miracle when you were still playing?”
Kimura remarks, “What would they do with one anyway. All Seihou does is play defense. The Miracles are offense-oriented.”
Ryuuhei replies, “Ah, isn’t it too late to have regrets about the way one’s team played? Or how you played yourself? It was a good three years.”
Miyaji regards Ryuuhei for a long moment, face pensive, then shifts his glance to Ryuuhei’s head. He says, “Are we distant cousins or something? Kimura, get my distant cousin a pineapple.”
Kimura goes into the store, shouting for his father. Miyaji scoots over on the rack, and Ryuuhei sits. The metal bar is cold and hard against his thigh, but the surface is clean enough, no hint of rust or scuff marks. He sees Kimura stop near the display window to help an old man.
“Where’s your other half?” Miyaji asks.
“I wasn’t aware that I had another half.”
“Cute. I’m talking about Number 4. You two were Seihou’s core, weren’t you?”
“We were,” Ryuuhei replies. “Good times. So. Where are you going for university?”
“That’s still a long way off,” Miyaji says. “Shutoku has to win the Winter Cup first.”
Kimura brings the pineapple, along with a knife and three bowls. Ryuuhei stays until the fruit has been reduced to the jagged, sticky pieces of the shell, the spiky clump of green leaves lying forlorn in a bowl. “Thanks,” he says before leaving, and Miyaji nods.
***
Ryuuhei wanders around the gym until Tsugawa’s loud comments about how his senpai is bound to fail the entrance exams start to get under his skin, annoy him enough to leave. He walks out onto the school grounds. The gigantic pedestal clock in the yard shows that he was in the gym for only five minutes. He has enough time to make it to cram school and still be able to use the “there was a lot of traffic, Sensei, sorry, sorry” excuse. He goes and does so.
Iwamura is sitting in the front row of their classroom, copying lines from his Japanese History textbook. Ryuuhei remembers watching and re-watching recorded games with him just a few months ago, ad nauseam, until all the other members of the team had dozed off or traveled to a distant mental plane where things were far less boring. “Keep your eyes on the game,” Iwamura would say to him. “What do you see? What’s your impression of those guys?” And they would craft together a more solid defense and offense and then practice and practice. Practice makes perfect. They would stick to perfecting their martial arts techniques, focusing their concentration, nothing new.
It was ultimately their downfall. Seirin proved that in the semifinals of the Interhigh Preliminaries. The King of the North, too set in the old ways, too predictable, to advance past the preliminaries against a team still trying to find its footing in the basketball world. To console Tsugawa, to console himself maybe, Iwamura said, “The strong don’t win. The winners are the strong ones. They were stronger, that’s all.” When Ryuuhei had apologized outside of the showers, using his dripping hair as an excuse for the tears that kept leaking out of the corners of his eyes, Iwamura put a hand on his shoulder, said, “We have to accept that there is an ebb and flow to victory. It’s fair that way. Let’s go watch the next game.”
Seeing Shutoku - another King, a team that didn’t have the excuse of sitting back and defending most of the way through, of being too set in the old ways - lose that game was somewhat consoling. Ryuuhei joked around with Tsugawa on the bus ride back to the school, and he smiled until his face hurt while he and the other seniors were formally retiring from the club. He started cram school with the seniors and sat at that desk on Iwamura’s right, now occupied by a guy who is chewing on a pencil and scratching his head and pushing his textbook towards Iwamura. Who pauses in his meticulous copying to lean over and help the guy out.
“Hey,” Ryuuhei says, as he is passing between them to reach an empty desk at the back.
Iwamura nods. Ryuuhei sits down and pulls out his own textbooks. He has a fairly good memory and decent analytical skills, so he has never had to study too hard for anything. The only subjects he really needs to revise are the foreign languages, but thankfully the examinations for those will be written and not verbal. Stringing foreign words into functional sentences, that process of having to distill a language to its bare bones, always stumps him. I want this. I want that. I am happy. I feel unhappy. Too direct and childish.
After they are dismissed, Ryuuhei says hello to Ohmuro and Sakamoto and then seeks Iwamura out again, suggests that he come to practice. Iwamura frowns. When they are outside in the freezing air, huddling into their coats, he replies, “You do realize that we have less than a month left before the entrance exams? I don’t want to waste my time and then get bad scores.” He blows on his hands. There is a small, round callus on the middle finger of his right hand. “I want to go to a university that is renowned for both its academics and basketball team.”
Ryuuhei forces a laugh, says, “Oh, come ooon! It’s only for a few minutes.”
“Minutes that I can’t afford.” Iwamura glances at him. “I’ll visit after the exams are over.”
***
Kaa-chan has been sighing intermittently over the past week about how her baby boy is going off to university and will soon forget all about her, so Ryuuhei decides to skip cram school that Monday and go find a nice present for her. She is an avid reader, so his first stop is her favorite bookstore. He is searching through the shelves for any new bestseller that has a relatively engaging first page when he spots Imayoshi.
Ryuuhei occasionally says things like “people don’t forget grievances easily,” but he really isn’t the type of person who spends time actively liking or disliking people or recounting their faults. There are certain people, however, whom he avoids if given the chance, and Imayoshi is definitely one of them. Practice games between Seihou and Touou this year were not friendly and full of instances of upstanding sportsmanship, to say the least. Touou’s style of play is a pain in the ass to analyze because the players make little to no attempts at being cohesive. The regulars, apart from Susa, have difficult personalities. Ryuuhei would rather take another beating from that monster Himuro in another Street Basketball 5 on 5 game than play against Aomine, whose lackadaisical presence on the court during the practice games and bored eyes were rather insulting.
Imayoshi walks over to Ryuuhei, eyes closing behind the glasses as he smiles, says, “Well, if it isn’t Kasuga-kun. Good evening.”
“Long time no see, Imayoshi-kun.”
“I didn’t know that you liked to read.”
“How would you? It’s not usually something that’s advertised on the face, is it?”
This response elicits a short chuckle from Imayoshi, followed by a, “I hope we’ll be seeing more of each other in the future.” The Kansai-ben is rather thick on his tongue. Ryuuhei wonders if Imayoshi does it on purpose. “We’re both Toudai-bound, aren’t we?”
“We’ll see.”
“It’ll be nice to try something new. Basketball has been fun, but ultimately disappointing, am I right?”
Ryuuhei smiles, replies, “Self-reflection will have to wait until the entrance exams are over.”
“True, true.”
He glances at the book in Imayoshi’s hand, catches sight of the title, and is promptly horrified. The Beginner’s Guide to Grave Digging. A picture of a gray shovel is splashed across the front cover.
Imayoshi holds the book up and says, “Have you read this before, Kasuga-kun? It looks interesting. I was thinking of sending it to Hanamiya-kun for his birthday. You remember Hanamiya Makoto?”
“Oh, yes.” Ryuuhei remembers how Hanamiya tried to trip Iwamura at least three times per quarter in the last game Seihou played against Kirisaki Daiichi. “I’m sure he’ll love it. Be sure to tell him I said happy birthday.”
“And tell your captain, that is,” Imayoshi smirks, “your former captain, that I said hello. I suppose you two are going to different universities? If I remember correctly, he was an expert center, but not a genius. A team full of experts but not geniuses, I believe that is how Kasamatsu-kun phrased it once. Well,” he looks Ryuuhei up and down, “he may have been too hasty in judging you. You may be bordering on genius. Though not quite in mine and Kasamatsu-kun’s class.”
“Genius is overrated,” Ryuuhei replies. He has watched this year’s brutal Interhigh quarterfinals game, Kaijou versus Touou. Kise against Aomine. Former teammates now turned rivals probably because they each have so much talent they find it unchallenging, boring, to play on the same team. The only way they can get a proper thrill is by duking it out on the court. He continues, “ I have a great time being normal. Later, Imayoshi-kun.”
“I hope to see you at the Winter Cup finals,” Imayoshi says. “It should be amusing.”
***
Afternoon practice has just started when Ryuuhei spots Iwamura striding through the doors of the gymnasium. It is still December, but here Iwamura is, forgoing his studies just to fulfill a friend's request. Ryuuhei waves once and then remains on the bench.
It takes about five seconds for Tsugawa to notice his new audience member. “Captain!” he exclaims. “I mean, Iwamura-san!” He runs over to Iwamura, stops just short of throwing his arms around Iwamura’s broad shoulders.
Practice is on the verge of being suspended, since the current captain is babbling a mile a minute while looking starry-eyed, when Iwamura yells at Tsugawa and the rest of the team to go back to what they were doing.
Iwamura walks over to Ryuuhei and sits to his left. They watch their former team running around on the court, passing, dribbling, shooting. Their sneakers squeaking in an almost harmonious rhythm to the thudding of the basketballs. The players smiling and scowling and cussing and sweating through their jerseys.
After ten minutes, Iwamura remarks, “Their defense isn’t as cohesive as before. The only way they can keep using our former techniques is with a point guard who can coordinate their individual strengths into one defensive whole.”
“Are you going to tell Tsugawa?”
Iwamura continues to watch them, his eyebrows furrowed, the nostrils of his big nose flared. His stubble is thicker than ever. Ryuuhei hopes that the members of his future basketball team won’t make fun of him, say things when Ryuuhei is not there to lighten the situation. Not that Iwamura Tsutomu needs protecting.
The only time Ryuuhei has seen him disconcerted was on their first day of tenth grade. A stupid kid had called Iwamura a “fat old man,” and Iwamura looked upset and a little sad, like he couldn’t believe that this was still happening to him in high school. The homeroom teacher had not entered the classroom yet. Ryuuhei had to open his mouth and divert the class’s attention by making a joke, he can’t remember what it is now, and Iwamura had given him a smile of thanks afterwards, open and honest.
They ate lunch together. Iwamura asked Ryuuhei if he played basketball, and in the afternoon they signed up for the team together, even though Ryuuhei had planned to pick up a different hobby in high school, a more casual and low-key activity, maybe photography. He had played basketball in junior high because he was a decent point guard, but the team never made it past the prefectural tournaments, and he didn’t care too much about winning either. However, the Seihou High Basketball Club with its “Invincible Resolve” motto promised a different future, and Iwamura was an interesting teammate, with his no-nonsense attitude, his sincere devotion to whatever task he had on hand, his rare moments of quiet humor. Ryuuhei decided to stick around, wanting to see how far Iwamura would go in the basketball world, how far they could go together. Somewhere along the line, they became friends.
Ryuuhei does not regret his decision. Iwamura has been a consistently good teammate, and the high school circuit has been interesting, full of disparate personalities with their distinct purposes gathering on the court to play ball. The court is where Ryuuhei met Kuroko Tetsuya, quiet and mysterious, untangling himself from the shadows to play for his senpai, for his friends, for something else hidden deep within, with such determination, such fierce eyes.
“I’m not going to tell Tsugawa anything,” Iwamura says now. “He used to love playing defense, but I believe that he recognizes the importance of a strong offensive-style play now. I trust him and Takahashi to build up a great team. A team better than before. Seihou was becoming too reliant on the ancient martial arts techniques.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. That’s what the word on the street is anyway.” Ryuuhei smiles, straightens up on the bench. He needs to fix his habit of slouching. “I just wish I had seen our faults sooner. I’m sorry I let you down, Buchou.”
This apology is met with a frown, and then Iwamura says, “What are you talking about? We perfected our defense, and it worked for us for a very long time. The team couldn’t have done it without you, and they can’t do without you now, which is why they need a new style of play.”
Iwamura isn’t exactly ungenerous with compliments, but Ryuuhei had expected the praise to end along with their graduation from the club. His cheeks feel a bit warm. “Thanks,” he says.
After a long moment, Iwamura says, tone gruff, “By the way, Tsugawa has been complaining that you keep coming to practice and disturbing their, quote-on-quote, flow. There are better places for you to be, you know.”
Ryuuhei laughs. “Yeah, I know. Cram school, right? Alright, Iwamura, I promise to faithfully attend from now on.”
“Good.”
“As long as you promise me something.”
Iwamura raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“There’s no need to frown! I just want you to come watch the Winter Cup Final with the team and me.”
“There was no need to ask. I was already planning to go.”
***
It’s just like old times, the team meeting up in front of Seihou High and then boarding a bus to go to the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, where the final game of the Winter Cup is about to take place. They join the other defeated schools there and make small talk and lighthearted jokes as they walk towards the building, which is lit up like a beacon in the night. The hurts and frustrations of the past year forgotten for the time being.
Imayoshi is there with his former team. He glances at Iwamura and then smirks at Ryuuhei, who waves in reply. Inside the Gymnasium, Ryuuhei spots Miyaji and Kimura. They are walking towards the locker rooms with their team, their heads held high, smiling. They have placed third in the tournament. Not a bad way to end their high school basketball career.
The seats in the main arena are filling up quickly. Tsugawa manages to find a space for the Seihou team to stand together, and Ryuuhei stands to Iwamura’s left this time.
Rakuzan and Seirin are warming up below. Kuroko is looking particularly serious and determined. A part of Ryuuhei wants Rakuzan to win, put the upstarts in their place, but mostly he wants a good show. The team that plays the best tonight will win tonight, and they will deserve that win.
Just before the game starts, Ryuuhei turns to Iwamura, says, “We should go to the same university and play basketball again.” He smiles. “Our journey can’t end at the preliminaries of an Interhigh, right? And there was that pathetic 5 on 5 where we played for fun but still lost by such a wide margin. We have to get our fame back.”
Iwamura smiles back, slow at first, a touch grateful, and then, finally, full of promise. “Sounds good,” he says.