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7am.
Shintarou doesn't eat breakfast, but he does take a can of shiruko from the fridge as he walks past it into the living room. He switches on the TV, turns on Oha-Asa. Cancer's in third place: lucky item, a blue pen. He removes one with careful precision from the study room drawer, proceeds to pour himself a cup of tea, drains it in exactly seven gulps.
Counts seven scrubs of the sponge. Taps the mug seven times before he puts it back to dry.
When he goes outside, Takao is already waiting, fingers tapping absently on the handlebars. He doesn't comment as Shintarou slips his shoes on and off seven times, doesn't make a sound when he takes two extra minutes locking and unlocking the door. He just waits, quiet in the morning air, as Shintarou walks the three-foot distance from the front door to the rear-cart, closing the space between them.
-
He never tells anyone. Even to him it sounds—ridiculous, the idea of—lucky numbers, lucky colours, lucky objects. Who would he tell? And what would he say? Sometimes my brain produces flashes of people dying and tells me there is something I must do to save them. Sometimes my sister burns in a fire unless I tap on wood seven times. Sometimes everybody I love perishes in a car crash if I fail to wear my lucky colour.
(It only became worse, the older he grew. Hold your breath for forty seconds or your entire family will get cancer. Bring your orange pencil case or you will fail your exams. Practice shooting three hundred and forty-three baskets before the match, or your team will lose, and Akashi will get angry.)
He chanced upon Oha-Asa, one day, catching the television screen seconds before his sister switched channels, and even that felt like fate, the universe offering him a way to save his loved ones. And he never looked back.
So he tells no one. Because it's ridiculous, and strange, and it makes him sound—not normal.
(He almost had to talk about it, once, back at Teikou, when Aomine had grumbled at the giant stuffed teddy bear taking up all the space at their cafeteria table and why do you believe in that bullshit horoscope anyway, Midorima? and Akashi had turned, with that curious, analytical glint in his eye, probably thinking that Aomine, however much of an idiot, had a point, Shintarou being one of the most logical people he knew and therefore being, theoretically, much less predisposed to such superstitious nonsense, and Shintarou's heart had felt as if someone had reached icy hands into his ribcage and wrapped freezing fingers around it—)
Regardless.
He's not there, now.
-
"Seriously, Shin-chan, this thing is huge," Takao whines one day. "Couldn't you have brought a smaller one?"
"This was the one Oha-Asa recommended," Shintarou says. The raccoon statue is heavy in his arms; he has to strain to keep his voice even. "I do not wish to tempt fate."
Takao gives an exaggerated sigh, but he helps to heave the ceramic monstrosity into the back of the cart, and Shintarou's heart warms a little, at the sight.
-
Overall, the students at Shuutoku don't give him much grief. They stare, of course, at the ludicrous items that Oha-Asa insists will ward away bad luck from Cancers: a watermelon-shaped lamp, a two-litre bottle of detergent, a neon purple bunny plushie that Takao, inevitably, takes great delight in. But there's no whispering, no sniggers, no snide remarks sent his way. His classmates treat him with the same perfunctory politeness with which they treat one another, and after a few months—after his name consistently makes it to the top of the grade ranking board, after the basketball team annihilates a few of the top Tokyo schools—they even start nodding at him in the hallways, asking about training, occasionally coming to him for a question about the homework.
There are even—confessions. Not as many as his teammates talk about in the locker rooms and definitely not as many as Kise used to get, but. Notes in his shoe locker, letters written in cutesy block handwriting. One girl even goes so far as to confront him at practice, determinedly ignoring Takao's snickers as she does it.
Shintarou isn't used to it.
(It was different, at Teikou. That was—unforgiving. It hadn't mattered whether or not he was a miracle on the court; he can still hear the giggles and the pointed mockery, the elbows and shoes aimed to jostle and trip in the hallways. He pretended to ignore it, of course—ignore them—pretend as though he was above such childish nonsense. But there was only so much a person could take, and the counter in his head had not, as usual, helped.)
"It's your sparkling personality," Takao says with a shit-eating grin, after, and Shintarou sniffs.
"Don't be absurd," he says, and applies himself to the ball, hoping that Takao doesn't see the way his ears are most definitely red.
The Shuutoku team, too, doesn't ask questions. They tolerate the lucky items on the team bench with a belligerent air that later turns into grudging acceptance, even if they don't quite understand why they need to be there. And they begin to wait for Shintarou, even when he takes too long to wrap the tape seven times around each finger. When he has to take twenty-one minutes exactly in the showers. When he has to shoot three-hundred-and-forty-three more baskets before he leaves the court, because his ludicrous brain has decided his lucky number for the day is not just seven but seven times seven times seven.
("Shin-chan, red bean," Takao sometimes hollers after practice, when he's shooting his baskets and the rest of the team is cooling down on the bleachers. But they never rush him, and the can is always still cold when he gets there, like they've learned to count with him.)
(It's nice. He's not used to it—but—it's nice.)
-
And then there's Takao, who—is a mystery in himself.
Mostly he's irritating. Mostly, he's too loud, and too touchy, always flinging an arm around Shintarou or laughing uproariously at some joke, usually at Shintarou's expense. The day they got their uniforms he practically wept with laughter. "Shin-chan, you look like a carrot," he'd gasped between bouts of cackling while Shintarou had looked on, stony-faced.
But.
Takao never laughs at Shintarou when it matters. He'll tease and coax, but he never goes too far, never says anything that can't be taken back. He cackles at the lucky items but never at the fact that Shintarou brings them; he listens intently whenever Shintarou lays out a strategy, eyes narrowed in concentration, and throws himself into whatever Shintarou wants to try. "I'm going to prove that I'm worthy," he'd said that one evening in the gym, just the two of them, eyes shining with something that looked a lot like determination, "of you passing the ball to me."
And if that had been that then it would have been fine, but—
proving that I'm worthy had turned into always being right where Shintarou was, whether it was in class or at basketball practice or before school at six thirty in the morning, when Shintarou hunts down his lucky items before the day starts, and it's—unnerving. People don't spend time with Shintarou out of their own free will, that's—not.
"Why are you doing this," Shintarou'd said, once. When Takao had taken him around what felt like half of Tokyo on the rear-cart, looking for a specific Christmas-themed snowglobe in the middle of summer. He'd meant it to come out casual; instead it’d sounded far too aggrieved, far too confused.
He'd fully expected Takao to laugh it off, to make a joke about training his calf muscles or babysitting or whatever it was he usually played their dynamic off as to their senpai. Instead Takao hadn't answered, just pedalled. When they'd gotten to a zebra crossing he'd let out a breath, pulling his arms upward in a stretch.
"Why not," he'd said without turning around, no falseness in his voice, "maybe I like your company, Shin-chan," and it had been so simple and so direct, and so—
They hadn't spoken for the rest of the ride, and thankfully they had found the snowglobe at the next store they stopped at, but Shintarou finds himself replaying those words more than he'd like to admit, every time he washes his hands raw or counts to seventy-seven or checks his bag five times to make sure his lucky item is there.
I like your company, Shin-chan.
When he gives Takao the first lucky item he buys specifically for him — a plastic flamingo so life-sized, so shockingly pink that everyone around them stops and stares — Takao smiles so wide, Shintarou has to catch himself before he smiles back.
-
When they lose against Rakuzan, Takao’s the one who finds him in the locker room, curled up on the bench with the shogi piece in his fist and a mishmash of his lucky items scattered across the floor.
This is it, Shintarou thinks dimly, as Takao surveys the scene in front of him. This is how it ends. He drops his head. Takao is smart. Takao has seen his eccentricities, and his lucky items, and his single-minded obsessions, and Takao will put two and two together and understand that Shintarou's brain is a broken thing, full of numbers and rituals and lunacy.
Takao sinks into a squat and begins to pick up the lucky items.
"What are you doing?" Shintarou says. Croaks.
"Giving you your luck back," Takao says. "Can't have our precious ace luckless. You're the one chance we've got at a finalist spot."
Shintarou looks into Takao's face, searching for any sign of sarcasm, but Takao's face is expressionless as he picks up the ceramic frog on the floor, and Shintarou blurts, "I cost us the match with Rakuzan."
Takao stops. He shoots Shintarou a look, incredulous. "Are you crazy?"
"We just lost because of me."
"You are crazy," Takao says. He laughs, mirthless. "What—look, it's not a good time, I can't—comfort you right now, Shin-chan. But we lost because of, among other things, your insane ex-captain—”
"No," Shintarou says, and it's desperation to make Takao understand that claws at his words, fights its way out of his throat. "You don't—I didn't—the lucky items, they weren't—enough."
Takao looks at Shintarou. He looks at the lucky items in his hands.
Shintarou can see the moment it clicks.
"What the hell," Takao says, almost bewildered. "You think we lost the match because you didn't bring enough lucky items?"
(And Shintarou almost sobs, because Takao has understood right, but wrong, at the same time, and—)
"Maybe the teapot," he says abruptly. The shame settles into every part of his body, familiar and heavy. His thoughts have always been ridiculous, but hearing them spoken out loud is borderline insanity. He shuts his eyes. "Or the bird figurine—”
"Hey." Warm hands cup his cheeks, and the shock of it is enough to force Shintarou's eyes open. Takao doesn't seem to notice their proximity. He crouches down so they're face to face, his eyes searching Shintarou's for—something. A sign, perhaps, that Shintarou is still there. That he hasn't gone mad. "Shin-chan. I know you believe in the lucky items and all, and I'm not trying to like, say anything about that, but Akashi waking up and deciding to be an asshole has nothing to do with whether or not you brought the right lucky item."
Shintarou looks into Takao's eyes. They're a very pretty slate blue. His hands are warm on Shintarou's face.
"I know," Shintarou says, and his voice breaks.
Takao studies his face a little longer, then seems to come to a decision. "Come on, Shin-chan," he says, and then he's getting to his feet with all the nonexistent grace of a sixteen-year-old athlete who's just played an excruciating match against Rakuzan's finest. "Let's go."
-
They end up on the stadium roof.
The senpai must have gone home by now, Shintarou thinks. It's cold, up here. He's glad he brought his jacket. He tilts his head up at the sky. If he concentrates hard enough, he can just about make out the stars.
The counter inevitably, inexorably, starts in his head: one, two, three.
"It's not your fault," Takao says.
A beat, two beats. Shintarou's brain jumps from counting the stars to noting the seconds until he responds. He shuts his eyes against it, then opens them again. Next to him, Takao is silhouetted against the rest of the stadium roof, the lights painting his outline shades of orange and black.
Seven seconds.
"It is not," Shintarou says. He tries not to look at Takao when he says it. "I don't believe it was."
"Didn't look like it back there," Takao says instantly. He doesn't shiver, but Shintarou notes the way he shoves his hands into his pockets, how he rocks back and forth on his heels. "C'mon, Shin-chan, I'm not an idiot."
Shintarou says nothing. The shogi piece is warm in his pocket, in his palm, the only thing on this roof that doesn't feel like ice. One second, two.
Takao is used to his silence. Perhaps he'll give up if Shintarou refuses to speak, put a pause on the interrogation. Perhaps with time he'll forget about Shintarou's breakdown in the locker room; perhaps he’ll let Shintarou continue to masquerade as a normal person, a seven-foot beanpole of a teenager whose only eccentricities are collecting toy figurines and listening to horoscope podcasts.
"Is this something to do with your counting thing?"
Shintarou freezes. His heart feels like ice. "How do you know about—”
"You aren't exactly subtle," Takao says, "and I have eyes and, you know, a basic understanding of numbers." He exhales. His breath fogs in the night air. "It is, huh."
Shintarou tries, so hard, to think of something else to say. Instead he just says, "yes."
"So come on," Takao says, "explain it to me." His tone is perfectly reasonable. As if he's asking Shintarou to explain a maths problem he's having trouble understanding, a translation for their English class he needs dissected. "The counting thing. The lucky item thing."
"It is not—they are not things," Shintarou says. "And it does not matter. It won't happen again." He means both, the losing and the breakdown. It's bad enough that he let his foolish brain fall to pieces. It's worse that he did it in front of Takao.
(Takao, who is patient. Takao, who is kind. Takao, who helps him track down his lucky items and lugs them around without anything deeper than jokey complaints, who doesn't despise him, who actually—against all odds—seems to like him, as a person, as a friend, a companion instead of a basketball machine, whom he cannot, under any circumstances, lose.)
Takao, who dragged Shintarou out onto the roof for air when he was very clearly finding it difficult to breathe, who is staying with him in the freezing cold, who is asking, not demanding. Takao, who deserves an explanation.
Shintarou takes a deep breath.
"Sometimes," he says, "my brain feels as though it does not belong to me."
Takao listens to the entire ludicrous, nonsensical speech without interrupting. His expression doesn't change even as Shintarou stumbles, even as he stutters through a laundry list of recurring thoughts and compulsions. The counting. The death-imagining. The lucky items and everything they represent, the fact that he knows they probably do nothing for his luck, the fact that even that admission feels like tempting fate. His gaze stays fixed on Shintarou's, steady and grounding, as Shintarou goes on for what seems like a small eternity. His eyes are very bright.
"I'm sorry, Shin-chan," he says when Shintarou's finished. Shintarou has to drop his gaze. "I had no idea."
"I am not—don't—it is not you," Shintarou says. Snaps. He immediately regrets it. "You have nothing to be apologising for."
"Shin-chan," Takao says, with more grace than Shintarou deserves. "You deal with all of—that—” he waves his hand, as if to encapsulate every terrible experience Shintarou's ever had— "every waking moment. It sounds horrible. Let me say I'm sorry the inside of your brain feels like shit." He blinks, his brow furrowing, reaches up to Shintarou's face. Shintarou jerks back on instinct. Takao's thumb leaves a streak of cold on his cheek. He's crying, he realises with dawning horror.
"I apologise," he says stiffly. He wills himself to stop. "I don't—this is ridiculous—"
"Man, what did they do to you in Teikou," Takao says. He laughs, mirthless. He reaches up again, gently wipes another offending tear away. This time Shintarou doesn't stop him. "Shin-chan, you know you're allowed to feel things, right?"
"It was not Teikou," Shintarou says. "It was—I have never told anybody—”
Takao, of course, gets it without Shintarou having to say anything. His eyes soften. "Okay," he says. "Okay." And then, "we don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."
"I would appreciate it if you kept it from the others," Shintatou says. He tries to sound prim. It comes out shaky.
"Who would I tell, the senpai?" Takao says. "It's not like they don't already know about your lucky items."
Shintarou tries very hard not to think about the implications of that.
"Shin-chan," Takao says. Almost gently. His touch on Shintarou's shoulder is light, but Shintarou reacts anyway, like he's been shocked. He braces himself for pity. He finds only understanding. "I just meant they know you."
Shintarou finds his voice. "They know I am—eccentric."
There's a second of silence.
"Here's the thing," Takao says. He sounds almost conversational now, as though he's talking about the weather. He shifts on his feet, leans on the railing. "Nobody is normal."
"Takao."
"Normal is a lie. Miyaji-senpai throws pineapples at people. Ootsubo-senpai is seven feet tall and built like a wall and he still collects those idol figurines. Kise seems to like getting kicked around by Kasamatsu, it's almost, like, a kink—"
"Takao," Shintarou says again.
"Normal is a lie," Takao repeats. "So your head tells you bad things that aren't true and you collect lucky items and count things to deal with it. It's okay. It's no weirder than Kuroko's thing about vanilla milkshakes or Akashi's—no, you know what, that guy is actually weird as hell. That guy has issues." He shrugs. "See? You're fine."
Shintarou exhales. He tries to collect his thoughts. Everything is jumbled up in his chest, his stomach—feelings he doesn't know how to prise apart, to understand.
(Takao. Takao hasn't left, didn't run away screaming when Shintarou explained the strangeness of his brain. Against all odds, for whatever reason, Takao is still here.)
"Thank you," he says quietly.
Takao looks at him. His mouth quirks at the corners. "Anything for you, Ace-sama," he says, but it comes out so sincere that Shintarou finds it hard to breathe.
It's nice, out here, on the roof.
-
A few months later, when Shintarou feels Takao’s hand curl around his in the toy store they frequent for lucky items, he almost says: are you sure?
“You’re being awfully quiet, Shin-chan,” Takao says. It’s teasing, but there’s an undercurrent of nervousness Shintarou feels loud as day. “Don’t you like this colour bear?”
Shintarou closes his other hand over the orange keychain he’s holding. (Lucky colour for the day: orange, although this is not quite the right shade. Lucky item: bear keychain.) He can feel the rigidness in his posture, the clamminess of the hand Takao has so tentatively slotted his own fingers through.
“Do you,” he says. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears, the way his own voice wavers. “Are you.”
“Don’t know what you mean,” Takao says. His voice is an attempt at something chipper, but it sounds shaky, too.
Shintarou swallows. “I,” he says. “You know what I’m like.”
“Probably better than most people on the team,” Takao agrees. “A giant pain in the ass.” His fingers tighten around Shintarou’s. Just a little. “A megalomaniac with an ego as sky-high as your ridiculous three-pointers.”
“I won’t—” Shintarou can feel his own hand trembling. “I will need—I don’t know if I will ever stop—needing the lucky items.”
“Shin-chan,” Takao says. “Look where we are.” He jerks his chin upwards, rough with awkwardness. The shelves of plushies stare back at them with their glassy, unblinking eyes. “Do you think I’d be here if that mattered to me? Seriously?”
Shintarou looks at him. Takao’s eyebrows are raised, questioning, almost a challenge. It’s the same look Takao sometimes throws him on the court, right before he passes: not am I worthy, but do you trust me?
Shintarou takes a breath. He squeezes Takao’s hand once and—as the grin begins to spread across Takao’s face—starts looking for his lucky item in the right shade of orange.
(He mostly does it to hide his burning face, the way his heart is beating almost through his chest. After all, it looks as though he didn’t need the luck, today.)