Kaijou's Shiro

Chapter II

After the whole fiasco with Kaijou's feared Captain passing out on their manager's lap, practice swiftly resumed as if nothing ever happened – which was of course a huge and blatant lie that everybody was absolutely guilty of.

Regular warm-ups were a mess, since everyone was too distracted by the new addition to their club to concentrate. During shooting practice, more than five guys were trying to show off and ended up missing every single shot. While they're doing suicide drills, there is at least a casualty rate of two guys per second because they're not paying attention to where they're going. It also doesn't help that Shiro is studying them with great interest and curiosity. Interest because this is the first time she's actually watching a basketball practice at play, and curiosity because she is wondering why everyone is getting self-inflicted injuries during warm-ups.

In the end, everybody nominates Shinya to show her the ropes and hopefully distract her from staring at them so much, because the intensity of her eyes is starting to affect even Kise. The blonde model is missing every single pass and shot and is hitting anyone who's not paying enough attention to catch the ball.

Though that could be because even the friendly blonde himself is getting a tiny bit pissed at the way his teammates are shamelessly eye-fucking one of his dearest friends, and is missing on purpose. The way-too-cheerful smile on his face when he apologizes for 'accidentally' hitting someone should be enough proof for that, really.

"I was not aware that basketball practice could be so...dangerous, Shinya-senpai," Shiro states, her clipboard out and already taking notes regarding the number of practice drills.

"It's just you, trust me," Shinya says frankly, pushing up his glasses.

"I'm simply wondering why it's you who's showing me the ropes senpai. I expected the vice-captain to do it."

Shinya shakes his head, and gestures to the tall third-year who's desperately trying not to look their way.

"Kobori Kouji, jersey number 8 is our current vice-captain," Shinya smoothly explains, "he's also our center."

"Why isn't he teaching me then?"

Because he looks like he really wants to talk to you, if only he can get the shit out of his ass fast enough to do that. And I can assure you that whatever he wants to talk to you about will have nothing to do with basketball, Shinya inwardly sighs, annoyed by his senpais' hijinks and 'quirks'.

"You don't want to know."

Shiro takes that explanation with a brief 'Okay' and continues on a different line of questioning.

"So are there individual training menus for everyone? Besides what I've already seen," Shiro quickly switches topic.

Shinya, deciding to accept her change of conversation, nods and continues explaining to her the dynamics of their team as they occasionally watch the match play out. Today is the first-years against the second years, and Ryouta's team was barely pushing ahead by two points, which was a common occurrence in their practice matches. Shinya faintly notices the intense concentration behind Shiro's eyes as she quickly pens down whatever the bespectacled second-year is saying. The reserve shooting guard actually knows the white-haired girl through his mother and her modelling manager, Nakamura Kana, and is gravely aware of the amount of work the freshman girl goes through on a daily basis and feels like she's overdoing it with the whole manager kick.

"Aren't you tired?" Shinya asks bluntly.

Shiro blinks owlishly at him, before slowly nodding. "A little."

How vague.

Shinya deadpans, "Are you even getting enough sleep every night?"

"Four hours. I've been getting better at sleeping three."