MiRACLE (KnB Fanfic)

33.

AN: Probably only one or two more chapters left to go!

-

"Look Taiga," Tatsuya pushes Hiroto into the chair by the shoulders and leans in closer. "This is Hiroto."

Hiroto smiles shyly at the laptop's camera, nervously reaching over to pull his loose sweater back over his shoulder.

"Uh," accented Japanese comes from the speakers. The redhead rubs the back of his neck, looking anywhere but at the screen. "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too," Hiroto says, in the same, overly formal form of speech.

Then, awkward silence.

Tatsuya looks between them, then straightens and sighs. "Why are both of you so terrible at communication? Come on now," he claps his hands, "name, age, and one fun fact about yourself, let's go."

"Oh, hell no!" Taiga yells, and at the same time Hiroto wails, "please, no!"

"Wow, you're almost in harmony," Tatsuya says with a deadpan. He leans forward with a huff, the ring around his neck glinting in the reflection of the ceiling lights. "C'mon, you two, I'm finally introducing you."

"Even if you say that, I'm not sure what we'd talk about," Taiga admits. He leans back a little, and Hiroto catches the little silver chain bouncing at his front.

Hiroto smiles at that.

"What're you grinning about?" Tatsuya side-eyes him.

Hiroto turns around and gets poked in the face. He laughs it off, "you two have matching rings, huh?" he says, pointing at his own chest.

Tatsuya beams, "yes we do. It's proof of my undying love for Taiga."

Hiroto swoons, a hand on his cheek. "Ooh, tell me more."

And Taiga on the other side of the screen bursts into red. "Don't be misleading!!"

-

"He's really giving me a run for my money, y'know?" Tatsuya says with a resigned sigh. "It's like with you, but worse."

"Well, I certainly live to breed inferiority complexes," Hiroto says, as if that isn't objectively a terrible thing to insinuate, "if you look around Japanese social media a couple months ago, all you'll see is people shitting on my ego."

And Taiga's already on his phone. "All on Basketball news now are these rainbow-looking guys., and I can't read any of this crap"

"it's something among the lines of--"

Hiroto clears his throat and puts on his best impression of a paparazzi headliner.

"Plays dirty, foul mannered, most despicable player in basketball history!!" Then he immediately morphs back to his bored expression. "They're pretty dumb, but there were enough rumours to give me anxiety so."

Tatsuya's jaw drops, "that was the reason?!"

"To quote my friends in their most recent report, they're calling it my 'depressed fuck' phase," Hiroto says, casually.

"It's not a phase--" Tatsya stops himself to pinch the bridge of his nose. Then he turns back to Taiga. "As you can see, Hiroto's an eccentric one."