The week following Seirin's opener — attention, adjustments, and the tightening of threads
The win was small enough to be plausible and large enough to change things.
Seirin's first victory of the season gave the team a clean slate and a noise that wouldn't fade. It did not send the city into hysteria, but it bent people's attention. Reporters scribbled notes in the hallways; students who had never watched a game in their lives found reasons to squat on the bleachers and stare. The city's low-level hum of curiosity rose like static. For Seirin, the effect was immediate and domestic: more students stopped in the corridor to ask for autographs; more players were asked for extra drills; and the team's locker room began to sport small, smashed-together piles of good-luck charms left by shy fans.
Joshua and Kuroko walked through that bustle with an ease that made strangers pause. They did not seek the attention, but it tributed to them like leaves to the wind. Joshua wore the same quiet armor he always had—hands in pockets, jacket zipped to the throat so the star pattern along the lining barely caught the light. Kuroko's hoodie rode loose around him, the constellation stitch faint but visible beneath his collarbone whenever he moved.
"Congratulations," Riko said in a low, efficient voice as she met them outside practice the day after the game. She balanced her clipboard like a talisman and smiled in the way coaches do when they are both proud and ready to improve. "Great first game. But we have a long season. Scouts and analysts will come sniffing after that performance."
Joshua inclined his head once. "We'll keep the same rhythm."
Kuroko's soft smile was one of relief and quiet pride. The simple presence of the two of them together seemed to hush even the gossip. Teammates found themselves listening to Joshua's footfall and feeling it mark time.
That afternoon the gym was full of the residual electricity that follows success: a little lighter in the shoulders, a little sharper in the mind. The drills were tougher. Riko pushed them, because praise without progress was dangerous. "Now," she said, "we practice to bend, then to return to form. Make this week a rehearsal for the games that will really hurt."
The players responded. Kagami's face set into the kind of determined mask that made players around him take a small step back; he moved like someone who had found a new notch of hunger. Izuki sharpened his instincts, the tiny gears of thought behind his eyes clicking faster when Joshua guided timing and look-offs. Hyuga drove to the line with the ferocity of a man who had been told he was only halfway there. Even the quieter first-years moved with more intent; Joshua's steady pulse forced them to find pockets of balance they hadn't known they had.
Outside practice, the small-town rumor mill worked faster than any official announcement. A local sports blog posted grainy photos from the match: a still of Kagami in midair, a shot of Joshua's jacket caught at an angle that hinted at the starry lining, a softer picture of Kuroko's profile as if painted in pale watercolors. Teenagers argued in forum threads—some declared Seirin would go far, others mocked the sudden "constellation aesthetic." But the undercurrent everyone noticed most was not the fashion; it was the clarity in Seirin's plays. The team moved like one organism more often than like a collection of parts. That was Joshua's doing as much as Kuroko's and as much as Riko's.
The first test after fame is scrutiny
On Wednesday the gymdoor swung open and a man in a black coat stepped in—an alumnus of sorts, if the way he held his shoulders and the way his eyes measured motion were any sign. He introduced himself to Riko as an independent scout who compiled video for a handful of university coaches and private academies. He carried a small camera, but what made everyone notice was the quiet in the way he talked about Seirin.
"You've got interesting timing," he said after watching a brief drill. "And that new player—white hair? He's the kind that makes other players change how they breathe."
Riko's answer was a clipped nod. "We're a work in progress," she said. "But we practice very intentionally."
The scout's eyes flicked to Joshua, and for a long minute the gym felt measured by his watch. "Keep him healthy. Hearts like that draw heavy hands."
When he left, his caution trailed after him like a scent. Scouts were not malicious creatures; they were merchants of projections. To be noticed by them was to become a commodity: a possibility in someone else's plan. The players processed this slowly. For some—the first-years and their eager parents—it was an intoxicant. For others—Kagami and Hyuga especially—it felt like a new weight to bear.
Aomine's message
That night, a message arrived on Kuroko's phone. Aomine, who had shown up to the opener out of curiosity and stayed partly out of old habit, sent a single line with the kind of brevity that could bruise and flatter at once.
You lucky bastard.
It was not a taunt. It smelled like recognition—an accidental compliment from a man who rarely gave praise. Kuroko read it and did the thing he always did: he tucked the small thrill into his chest like a smooth stone. He showed Joshua the message.
Joshua's reaction was a small smile that was mostly in his eyes. "He'll say more in person if he wants to," Joshua observed. "But I did want to see old friends."
Aomine's return visit came sooner than anyone expected. He dropped by one afternoon during open practice, swinging into the gym with the gait of someone who would decide the day's temperature by where he placed his feet. Akashi's absence at such visits was notable; Akashi didn't make appearances unless the calculus demanded it. Aomine did the opposite; he showed up precisely because his own curiosity burned.
For a while he stood on the sidelines, watching Joshua and Kuroko move together. Aomine's face was not the same as it had been months earlier—his arrogance had a fissure of something like respect starting at the edges. He did not approach immediately. He instead watched, as if learning the shape of a new rival without knowing yet whether he would contend or collaborate with it.
When the warmups broke for a special drill, Aomine's voice cut like a flare. "You damn twins—show me something," he called.
Joshua looked toward him, then at Kuroko, then stepped forward. The drill turned tacit: three-on-three between the older guest players and a selected Seirin line-up. Aomine took the lead for the visitors, snarling the way he always did when his interest peaked. Kagami burned on the other side, primed like a spring.
The halfcourt battle was fierce and quick. Aomine poured in unpredictable speed; Joshua absorbed it with a quiet that made the gym's dust motes look frantic in comparison. When Aomine attacked, Joshua adapted with a curvature of motion that read like a melody. He did not overpower Aomine—he engaged.
Aomine found the exchange interesting enough that he laughed, a short bark that was almost a concession. "Huh. You're not bad. You're annoying, but not bad." He rubbed the back of his neck. "You left Teiko… that had reasoning, huh?"
Joshua's answer was clipped and honest. "I left to protect them from what I am."
Aomine's laugh turned soft and something like unsettled. "Sounds about right."
It was a small moment, one person's recognition of another. But the kind of acknowledgment that came from Aomine meant something the media couldn't print: that even the Miracles—some of whom guarded their esteem like trophies—could be moved by Joshua's presence.
Akashi's watchful calculus
Akashi, however, did not send a message. He observed indirectly: through footage, through a small, disciplined chain of scouts who fed him tactical observations, through a quiet presence in the data columns he maintained in phone files. Akashi's strategy was a slow-acting chemical. He did not move like Aomine did—flaring and burning. He chilled and crystallized an approach until it fit a neuronal pattern he could exploit. To him, Joshua remained a variable not yet solved.
In the quiet of his room, Akashi reviewed the opener's footage and then the subsequent practices. He paused frames, annotated angles, and sketched probable shifts in Joshua's tendency. The result he wrote in a single short phrase, a private admission:
Interesting threat vector.
It was not flattery. It was not fear. It was calculation wrapped in the smallest trace of concern. Akashi's mind was already mapping ways to take that vector apart, or to bend it to his will—whatever the future required.
The pressure of shoestrings and small talk
Back at Seirin, the team carried on. But the attention changed the small rituals. Local street vendors recognized the players and offered discounts for practice gear; the school photographer lingered longer, trying for the perfect shot of Joshua's jacket seam lit with a flash. A parent offered to finance a portion of new warmups with a polite, enthusiastic email to the school board. The small-town niceties were a warm current under the more acute stream of expectation.
Kagami felt it in a way that made him restless. He returned to the court later than everyone most nights, shooting until the backboard rang out like a bell. Joshua would sometimes stay too, sitting on the bleachers and watching him, like a lighthouse that offered no shelter but precise guidance.
"You keep scaring the new guys," Hyuga teased one night as they wrapped long drills. "You think you can bench every rookie with one look?"
Kagami snorted. "I'm not scared. I just… I don't like being out-read. I've gotta push."
That push took shape in physical strain—the sort of work that aged a muscle and sharpened a joint—but it also took shape as curiosity. Kagami wanted to know the nuance of Joshua's movement: the timing, the micro-steps, the tiny breaths he used to coax a defender into a wrong lead. He asked Joshua to run extended one-on-one sessions with him. Joshua obliged but never overwhelmed him; instead he trimmed the edges off Kagami's slashes until they moved from brute force into something more precise.
"Kagami," Joshua said one night in the hum of the empty gym, "you do not have to lessen your power to learn to fit a rhythm. You only have to let the rhythm add to your power."
Kagami wiped his hands and spat on the floor with an irreverent smirk. "Sounds like you want to keep me simple."
Joshua's smile was patient. "I want you to be effective."
"And I want to be the one that beats you someday," Kagami muttered.
"You might," Joshua replied with no heat. "Or you might be the one to make my rhythm stronger."
Kagami considered that and laughed, then launched into another series of moves as if to prove something to the floor.
A small tournament, a bigger mirror
A week later the town held a regional pre-season tournament: not the national stage, but rich with local rivalries and hungry teams that treated every play like a story. Seirin entered more to sharpen their mug than to be crowned; Riko used the tournament as a testbed for rotating starters, for exposing younger players to pressure, and—unofficially—as a chance to see how the constellation rhythm held up under unfamiliar conditions.
The tournament venue thrummed with school banners from nearby prefectures. Seirin's warmups—those glossy white jerseys with teal gradients and the faint constellation seams—drew attention. Kids mimed the dribble and tried to mimic Joshua's posture; coaches in the stands scribbled furiously. For an afternoon, a small chorus of gossip swelled and spread, and then was folded into the next school's victory.
Their first match was not smooth. Opponents were scrappy and punched in ways that forced the team to adapt. Joshua's presence helped maintain spacing, but it also highlighted the team's still-raw edges: lapses of communication in transition, a missed switch that led to an easy layup, a tired rotation that left an opposing shooter open for an extra three. Riko called timeouts, cursed, and rewired plays on the fly. Each adjustment taught them more than a practice rep ever could.
In the evening's semi-final, Seirin faced a team that played with a pace designed to disorient. They pushed the ball, sprinted hard, and tried to turn defense into offense like a machine with an efficient converter. Joshua read it early and adjusted in a way that made the opposing offense find itself misaligned, but the game still came down to the last two minutes and a fumbled pass that gave Seirin the lead. Kagami's final block—an act of muscle and timing that made the crowd leap—sealed their win.
After the game, a small swarm of students and local reporters approached them. "What's your strategy?" someone shouted. "How did you get so coordinated?" another asked.
Kuroko answered in the way he always did: simply and deeply. "We practice listening." It was the kind of line that made people want to unpeel their own rhythm and see if they were in tune. Joshua nodded, but then made a point of speaking over the noisy applause.
"It's not magic," he said. "It's repetition, it's small choices, it's keeping each other safe on the court."
Some of the crowd would later frame his line as philosophical. Others called it banal. The truth was smaller and more useful: practice and care.
The nights Joshua could not silence
Yet for all the outward buoyancy, Joshua carried nights that did not quiet with the rhythm of practice. There were moments when his vision—no matter how tempered—bent with a pressure that felt like salt in a wound. After a long day, when his eyes closed for a moment on the bench, images would come unbidden: the push that had set his decision to leave into motion, the senior's hands, the collapse of something that should have been benign. He had learned to breathe around those memories and not let them be instructions, but they were always there like a low fretting sound.
Kuroko noticed. He noticed in the little ways: Joshua's jaw tensing when the gym's echo matched another time, the way his brother's hand would flex in sleep. Kuroko's method of comfort was small—bringing a thermos of soup, sitting a little closer on the bus, adjusting their choreography so Joshua bore less strain. It was not grand romantic gesture or theatricality; it was maintenance.
One night, after a long practice and a regional win, Joshua stayed late. The team had left, leaving the gym to a hush broken only by the sounds of the lights cooling. He stood at halfcourt and watched the hollow blue rectangles from the high windows. He felt a small churning of dread; the memory of what he had done at Teiko was a stone in his throat.
Kuroko joined him as if pulled by gravity. He did not speak at first. He just slid a hand into Joshua's and held on.
"You wonder if you made the right choice," Kuroko said quietly after a while. "You think that maybe staying away would have been better."
Joshua's breath fogged in the dim light. "I thought that. I still think that sometimes. But then I see you, how you smile when we get a play right, how you teach the others the silence to move in—these things matter."
Kuroko smiled, small and sure like a light in the dark. "We matter because we choose to matter."
Joshua's fingers tightened around Kuroko's. For a moment they were not tactics and drills and press conferences. They were just two brothers catching each other in the hollow places left by a world that had moments of cruelty. Joshua's vow to protect did not shrink into heroism; it settled into something more durable—a daily choice.
The mirror of other teams
Word of Seirin's rise traveled not only through the local channels but back up into the networks where the Miracles kept their own counsel. Teiko—always aware, always waiting—watched footage of Seirin with half-smiles and private analyses. Aomine's attention remained flickering like somebody's roughened lighter. He sent an invite—part dare, part curiosity—to Joshua: a chance to face him in a scrimmage, a street game under the city lights where ego and joy collided.
Akashi, predictably, did not send such crude invitations. He continued to compile vectors and annotate frames. He sent a private message to one of his trusted scouts: Observe Kagami closely. He is not to be underestimated as an accessory to Joshua's rhythm. The message was both warning and instruction.
Through the rest of the season, glimpses of what could happen if these arcs collided fanned out like a map with several unsettled paths. If Joshua's heart could make others breathe differently, then Joshua's absence could make others fight in unfamiliar ways. If Akashi found a way to cut the rhythm into notes he could command, then the future might look very different indeed.
But for now, Seirin had a pulse—their small, stubborn beat—and it carried them through the next days. The town cheered. The jerseys glittered faintly under neon lights. The players slept hard and trained harder. And in the quiet pockets between practice and game, the twins learned to hold the same rhythm for longer stretches of the day: two heartbeats that no longer feared finding one another.
The season had begun in earnest. The shape of competition was forming at the edges. There would be tests where their rhythm would fray and moments where only gratitude would patch it back together. For the team, for Joshua and Kuroko, and for the boy whose raw hunger now found nuance under Joshua's guidance, the road ahead flexed with possibility and peril.
But for the first time since Joshua had left Teiko, when he closed his eyes there was a sense that the choice he had made—however messy—was exactly the one he needed to keep making.
And that was enough to carry him into the next dawn.
End of chapter