That Manager - Kuroko no Basuke (Book 1)

第11Q

"It's only the first quarter." noted Kawahara.

"It's okay." assured Riko, making them look at her. "This game definitely depends on Kuroko-kun and Kagami-kun, who we had on reserve." She opened her hand to reveal a piece of toy. "However, that's not all."

"What is that?" asked Fukuda, who was as confused as the other first-years who were staring at the piece in her hand.

"One I broke before." she replied.

"Broke?" repeated Yasu.

Riko then began to explain, "After we lost last year, Hyuga-kun asked me how to make shots even while under pressure. I told him all he had to do was play under pressure, and he'll get used to it. So I suggested to break one of his precious Sengoku warrior figurines for every shot he missed during practice. Surprisingly, he agreed. In the end, he broke three, and the piece I'm holding now belonged to Shingen."

"Who cares about Kings?" snapped Hyuga when he made a three-point shot. "Go die!"

The first-years on the bench stared with wide eyes and blue lines underneath one of them. "His personality suffered a little, though" added Riko. "Hyuga-kun will always make important shots."

'I wonder if he was thinking about his precious figurines as he made those pressure shots...?' questioned Yasu, blinking owlishly at the captain.

Shutoku then had the ball. Otsubo passed it to Kimura, which was smacked away by Kuroko, but Takao immediately retrieved it before it reached to Hyuga. "Stealing a steal!" said Fukuda.

"Kuroko's been shut down!" added Kawahara worriedly.

"What are you doing?" asked Midorima mockingly. "We are doing everything we can. Defend harder. My shooting range isn't that short." He stood on the center line and shot the ball, scoring three points for his team.

'The high arc extends his range.' noted Yasu before recalling the time when she watched Midorima played during one of the preliminaries. 'This must be the bad feeling I had earlier. The entire half of the court is within his shooting range! Yet... why do I feel like this isn't his true power?'

With less than a minute left, Shutoku was ahead of Seirin by five points. Midorima returned to his team's basketball hoop and stood there. "As long as I'm back here, you cannot get behind me with Kuroko's passes." he declared. "But it's all irrelevant. My shots are three points, and your counter is only two. Even if we do nothing, the gap will grow wider."

Hyuga passed the ball to Kagami. "You've got something interesting there." said Kagami as he dribbled the ball in front of Midorima. "But..." He jumped up and made a three-point shot.

'I thought he wasn't good at outside shots.' thought Takao with surprise.

'If it goes in, it's fine.' thought Kagami as he dashed towards the basketball hoop. 'If it misses, I'll dunk it myself!' He avoided Otsubo's block and dunked the ball, doing a one-man alley-oop.

"Nice." said Kuroko when Kagami ran back to defend with the others. Mitobe gave him a pat on the shoulder.

"So nice how nice it was." said Izuki with a pun intended.

"Izuki, seriously, stop." scolded Hyuga, annoyed with his pun.

'One basket behind.' thought Riko when Seirin was three points behind Shutoku with fifteen seconds left. 'At this rate, we might be able to...'

But she was proven wrong when Midorima bounced the ball from Seirin's basket, stopping the team from running back to defend. "That was a pretty good shot for you." he remarked before he held the ball and bent his knees. "However..."