MiRACLE (KnB Fanfic)

20.

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When Coach Sanada told them Aisaka had resigned from the basketball club, and altogether the school, Aomine was stricken.

Midorima was furious. Akashi admitted to have expected this-- but not this way, not yet. Murasakibara was irritated too if the crushed chips bag and continued sour mood was any indication.

Haizaki had no reaction--even though everyone expected him to blow up and get angry, he didn't. Aomine realized that perhaps he had already known.

(He told Haizaki? And didn't tell me?)

Aomine couldn't hide the shock in his expressions. His movements shook, every nerve in him was battered by the situation-- he couldn't focus on anything.

He dribbled the ball, and when he realized Tetsu wasn't focusing too, he sat down right there and howled into the ground.

(Because how could Aisaka just do that to him?)

He just left. Without saying a thing. Weren't they friends?

It was like something died inside of him. Curled up and rotted through like an infectious disease, and only now was he feeling the intense agony.

He was missing something. Something beside him, a presence that was always one step before him, behind him, beside him.

The light he had been chasing had flickered away like a blown-out candle. Engulfed by darkness, losing his guide, missing his path, Aomine realized something.

He realized that he was now the one in the front of the pack.

(You saw what happened to him, a cold, haunting voice-- his own-- whispered to him.)

(Now, it's your turn.)

Aomine was scared of everything.

-

Ogiwara Shigehiro nearly got kicked off the basketball team in Meiko.

All of a sudden, in the middle of a vital practice match, he declared his desire to go to Tokyo to meet a friend. You can guess how the team took it.

"Ogiwara, you have the potential to become the core of the team," the captain at that time told him, "I know how much you value your friends over in Tokyo, but if you disregard us in the process, I don't think they'd like it, would they?"

"But, Captain," Ogiwara had fought back, determined, "I'm training to fulfill a promise I once had with a friend. If I'm not there for my friend when he really needs me just because we're too far away, I'd be having my priorities backward."

Ogiwara sat out for the rest of that match to watch and learn from his seniors. Right after that, with permission from the Captain and the coach, Ogiwara caught the first train in the morning to Tokyo.

But he was too late.

When he came to that house, picking up a rock and reminiscing the times he would toss a rock at that window-- it suddenly became so clear that everything, everything has changed since then.