Looking for a Miracle | Kuroko no Basket

14. Second Chance

Looking for a Miracle
Chapter Fourteen
Second Chance

With each training session that passed, the more and more worried I felt about Kuroko.

With each session, it became more and more clear that he did not truly fit in with the others. His skills lay in his misdirection, which he couldn't use when practicing to dribble balls and attempt to score hoops. I heard several people mutter to themselves and stare at him, wondering how he had ever made it into the first string in the first place.

He'll show them when the tournament comes around, I thought fiercely. Kuroko really had something special and he had worked so hard to get here - it just couldn't all go to waste!

It didn't look like it would be that easy, though.

On the day of the tournament, I woke up thinking that maybe Kuroko would be the only person on the team nervous for the upcoming match. He was the only one who hadn't played a match as a part of the first string. I had voiced my concerns to Sei as we met up outside the school, so the team could be driven to the venue together on the bus. Kuroko was already there and looked faintly sick, but Sei tried to assure me he'd recover by the time we started playing and the adrenaline overtook the nerves.

But as we approached the venue, Kuroko turned whiter and whiter so he was as white as a sheet and was unable to pay attention or keep still. Aomine and I tried to calm him down, but when Kuroko confessed that he had never played in a proper match before, the invoked more grumbles of uncertainty from the others. I glared at them, but their refusal to accept Kuroko wasn't something I could fix simply with a glare. If it could be fixed that easily, Sei would've had them all best friends with the blue-haired boy by the end of the first training session.

On top of that, Haizaki was absent, claiming he had a cold. All of us knew that he was faking it, however. He'd skipped out too many matches and practices to take this claimed absence seriously.

Because Haizaki was absent, and the restriction of first-years only Teiko had put in place as this year's challenge, Kuroko became part of the starting line up. If possible, he became even paler after hearing this.

Kuroko didn't even last a second in the match. I had winced; he was so nervous that he'd tripped over his shoelaces and landed face-first on the ground, resulting in a nosebleed. He had to be substituted for Nijimura while we waited for the bleeding to stop.

Even when the bleeding did stop and Kuroko was put back on, he was taken back off not long after. For some reason, the passes I'd seen that had worked so spectacularly in his practice match weren't connecting. They were always too far behind the player and resulted in fumbles, missed catches and created an uneven rhythm, throwing off the performance of the entire team.

Kuroko had looked dispirited when he was brought off. Teiko had won the match, but he hadn't performed nearly his best. I bit my lip when we stepped out for lunch, my eyes on him as he sat slightly off to the side. He hadn't wanted to talk with even me or Aomine.

"I hope Kuroko's okay," I sighed, as I took my seat beside Sei. I opened my bento and proceeded to eat. "I mean, he's got another chance later today, right?"

Sei took a while to respond. He sat, looking straight ahead, lips pressed into a line and deep in thought. "He'll need to take it," he said slowly. "One more mistake and he'll be put down into a lower string again."

My mouth fell open. "He wouldn't."

"He would. I overheard the coach."

I bit my lip. I placed my bento on the ground. "He has do it, though," I whispered. "He's worked so hard - they can't do that."