Rantipole - Kuroko no Basket x Fem!Reader x Haikyuu!!

Chapter 33 - Easy?

"Think fast, Kagemoron!"

I chuck a basketball at him as soon as he turns to face me, eyes wide as his nearest hand, happening to be his left, shoots up to grab the ball before it can hit him in the face. He then bumps it up to the crevice of his elbow and skillfully rolls it around his arm and wrist, performing impressive tricks in order to show off his progress. I smirk and watch him do his thing.

Furihata gapes at the ball Kagami bounces up and down with precision against the inside of his wrist. "Whoa. You're getting pretty good with your left hand."

"Yeah, it's been a lot easier to eat with this hand, lately," Kagami agrees. "Although any training with [Name] somehow ends up being torture."

"Do you see improvement or not?" I shrug innocently.

"Yeah, yeah, shut up."

Kagami finishes his ball tricks, palming it and tucking it into his hip, rubbing his eye with a yawn. Kawahara points out the bloodshot nature of them quickly. "Yet you still aren't able to sleep the day before a tournament game after all this time, huh?"

"Your eyes are so red it's terrifying," Fukuda adds.

"Tch. As if [Name]'s are any different," Kagami interjects, pointing out the dark circles beneath by own eyes.

I fold my arms defensively. "Well, you see, Taiga, our jobs for this team are quite different. It's my responsibility to go over all of our prior game strategies in order to spot any weaknesses in our play and weed them out before they can impact our outcome. Therefore, I stay up all night the night before a game in order to do just that. Your job is to be well-rested so that you can play at your fullest-capacity for the entire game, seeing as you are essential to that strategy I've spent so much time double and triple checking to ensure victory for our team. I found no weaknesses, last night, in our strategy. However, if you're too fatigued to play, all of my hard work - as well as the rest of the team's - will be for naught. You see where I'm going here?"

Kagami yawns once more. "Yeah. You're rambling. It doesn't matter to me what you're saying, I'll play just fine."

I sigh, rolling my eyes. "And this is why you're hopeless."

As of right now, the entire team gathers at the front gates of Seirin high school in order to get together for our first winter cup match against high school. Even though it's still summer. Not only that, but I managed to put together some new uniforms for the boys, tracksuit and all. Koganei and Izuki seemed rather happy about them, chatting amongst each other about the material and such. Kiyoshi appears to be in a daze of utter excitement to play in his first official match of the season.

"All right, everyone. We ought to get going, soon!" Riko announces with a sigh, hand on her hip as she tries to do a quick headcount. "Is everybody here?"

"We're still missing one," Hyuga mutters, hands in his pockets as he glances around. "Eh... Where's Kuroko?"

"I'm here."

The entire team jumps in response to the bluette's sudden statement. "You are?"

Kuroko steps forward, waving. "Yeah. I've been here the whole time."

His eyes immediately flicker to mine after claiming such things, his lips parted as he pants slights. My eyes narrow and I smirk at him knowingly. He knows that I realized he hadn't been here since the beginning; he was actually running late this time, but managed to play it off by blaming it on his weak presence. And since he knows that I'm the only one capable of noticing he hadn't been there, he seems rather pleading that I don't oust him. My smirk grows wider mischievously, but I shoot a sly wink at him and keep my lips sealed shut.