Chapter 113 - Round Two
Touou on offense. Imayoshi brought the ball up steadily.
"Over here!" Sakurai curled off a screen from Susa and called for it. The pass arrived immediately.
This time, Koshino had read the route. He fought through the screen and lunged at Sakurai before he could get set.
The shot clanged off the back of the rim.
"Rebound!" Uozumi snatched the defensive board with both hands and held it.
"Go!" Sendoh was already sprinting.
Uozumi remembered the near-turnover from last possession and found Yagami first this time. Yagami caught it without breaking stride and pushed the pace, turning up the court at full speed. Aomine attached himself immediately, right on his hip, refusing him a clean look ahead.
The two of them hit halfcourt nearly side by side. Yagami scanned the floor. Sendoh was streaking down the left lane. Fukuda Kicchou was trailing on the right.
Yagami raised the ball high in both hands, loading the motion of a lob pass.
Then, at the top of the arc, his wrists snapped forward and he drove the ball directly through the air.
Right past Aomine's face.
The ball zipped through the gap between Aomine's eyes and ear and hit Fukuda in stride at the rim. Fukuda went up and laid it in without breaking step.
Ryonan 68, Touou 65.
"Yagami just delivered a face pass - threading the ball directly past Aomine's head at point-blank range!" The announcer's voice carried genuine amazement. "That took some nerve."
From the Touou cheering section, voices carried: "That should've been an offensive foul! Wasn't that reckless?"
"No - the passing lane was deliberate and unobstructed. It doesn't qualify as dangerous."
The face pass was an advanced technique as old as the playground - threading a ball in the narrow space between a defender's face and their blind spot, using the threat of impact to freeze the reaction before it could form. The defender's natural instinct to flinch opened the window. The ball was already gone by the time the brain caught up.
Aomine stood where he'd been, expression flat. He hadn't moved a muscle.
"What, you think passing it through someone's face is impressive?" His voice was flat with irritation.
"More interesting to me," Yagami said, genuinely curious, "is that you didn't flinch at all."
Most players, even excellent ones, produced some involuntary reaction when a basketball came at their face at speed. Even if the brain knew the ball wouldn't hit, the body usually had its own opinion. Aomine hadn't so much as blinked. He'd actually tried to intercept it.
"It's a basketball," Aomine said, with the particular scorn of someone who found the question beneath them. "Why would I be afraid of a basketball."
Possession change. Touou on offense.
An ace earns that title precisely because his scoring efficiency often exceeds every other player on the roster combined. Aomine Daiki was that kind of player for Touou. The only argument for limiting his touches was the finite nature of a human body. One person's legs could only carry him so far before fatigue began to extract its tax.
Imayoshi ran the halfcourt offense, posting Wakamatsu in the paint. Wakamatsu used footwork to create enough space to get off a hook shot over Uozumi, but it didn't fall. Uozumi grabbed the rebound clean.
Touou sprinted back in transition.
Sendoh caught the outlet and settled into the halfcourt, reading the defense rather than forcing the pace.
"Not letting you through this time." Imayoshi stepped up with a new edge in his expression.
"Is that right."
Sendoh smiled and accelerated right.
"That direct?" Imayoshi slid across in anticipation, positioning himself squarely on the driving line before Sendoh's first step landed.
The read was correct. But Sendoh dropped his shoulder, drove his weight through his right foot and pushed off the floor with an explosive first step that the anticipation alone couldn't account for. The burst was enough to physically push Imayoshi half a step sideways on contact.
"I've got him!"
Sakurai immediately abandoned his assignment and rotated hard into the driving lane, throwing his body into the path of Sendoh's advance.
Sendoh's momentum stuttered for just a fraction of a second against the unexpected help coverage.
That fraction was all Imayoshi needed. His hand came through from behind.
A sharp clean sound. The ball came away free.
"Touou gets it back! A perfect combination steal between Imayoshi and Sakurai!"
Imayoshi had the ball and turned to push it immediately. He took one step and found Yagami directly in his path.
His stomach dropped. If Yagami was here, that meant Aomine was -
Completely open.
Imayoshi didn't hesitate. He shielded the ball with his body, executed a behind-the-back dribble and extended the pass behind him toward where Aomine had to be.
Another clean sound. A second steal.
The ball changed hands instantly for the second time.
"He got that one too!"
"Once you know who the pass is going to, it's not that complicated."
Yagami picked up the loose ball and drove toward Touou's basket. Aomine spread his arms and planted himself in the lane.
The crowd leaned forward.
Fukuda cut in from the right side as support. Yagami pulled the ball back behind him with his left hand and began a behind-the-back pass to the right.
Aomine read it. He drove off both feet and lunged right.
Yagami's right arm swung back. The ball flew right. And then, in the air, the ball clipped the inside of Yagami's right elbow joint cleanly and deflected hard in the opposite direction.
Sendoh caught it on the left side.
The gym took a half second to process what it had seen.
"What just happened?! He passed it behind his back to the right - how did it end up on the left?!"
It wasn't just the players on the court. The crowd was rewatching the moment in their heads and still couldn't account for it. In a game already full of difficult plays, the ball had simply appeared to change direction in midair without explanation. The only person on the court who had seen it clearly was Imayoshi, positioned behind Yagami from his failed pass attempt, who had the unique angle to see the elbow contact.
"Unbelievable," Imayoshi said under his breath, and launched himself at Sendoh.
Sendoh had already adjusted his feet. He released in one motion. The ball climbed in a clean arc.
Nothing but net. Three-pointer.
Ryonan 71, Touou 65.
"An elbow deflection pass - one of the rarest assists you'll ever see on any court at any level! Yagami Sorato to Sendoh Akira for the three! Ryonan extends the lead!"
In the stands, Kise grabbed the railing. "Did you see that?! Did you see that, Midorima?! This guy is incredible! That was amazing!"
"Flashy technique," Midorima said, pushing his glasses up, his expression maintaining its usual severity. But something moved behind his eyes for just a moment before settling back down. "That pass, though. That was genuinely beautiful."
A whistle. Touou called timeout.
The situation had grown uncontrollable. In the span of a few possessions after halftime, Ryonan had erased the deficit, retaken the lead and extended it, and done it while making Touou look disorganized in the process. The momentum belonged entirely to Ryonan.
The Ryonan bench was up.
Coach Taoka grabbed Yagami's shoulder and squeezed hard. "That's it! That pass was perfect, and your defense has been immaculate! Don't change a thing!"
"I didn't even know you'd pass it that way," Sendoh said, still smiling. "The timing and the angle were both exactly right."
Yagami nodded. His breathing was heavier now - the sustained physical effort of this game was starting to accumulate - but his eyes hadn't lost their focus.
There was a specific reason his defense on Aomine was working as well as it was: Aomine, in any situation, would never pass. Once the ball reached his hands, Touou's scoring option was completely fixed. Yagami had even prepared a contingency with Sendoh for moments when the one-on-one coverage broke down and a double-team became necessary.
For now, the situation was manageable.
But there was a nagging unease at the edge of Yagami's awareness that he couldn't quite dismiss. Something unresolved.
Could Aomine pass? Or was it something else?
The timeout ended.
Imayoshi came off a screen from Susa and rose for a three-pointer.
Nothing but net.
Ryonan 71, Touou 68.
From the Shohoku observation section, Mitsui shook his head. "That guy - he's not even a natural shooter. But somehow every time it matters most, he makes it."
"In our game," Miyagi said quietly, his expression tight, "I had nine assists in the first half. Three in the second. Every time Shohoku got close enough to smell it, he made the right read and the shot went in. Toward the end it felt like he could see what you were thinking before you did it."
---
The game found its rhythm. Both teams settled into a back-and-forth exchange, neither able to separate from the other by more than a possession or two. Aomine was unusually quiet - moving in the flow of the offense, not demanding the ball, not forcing the issue.
Ryonan ran its offense through Fukuda as the primary option, spacing the floor and working the paint. Touou answered. Points traded on both ends.
Ryonan 88, Touou 85.
One minute remaining in the third quarter. Touou ball.
Aomine moved to the left elbow and raised his hand.
He was asking for the ball the way someone wakes up from a nap - unhurried, as though no time had passed at all.
"Finally," Imayoshi muttered, with mild exasperation. "You haven't been sleepwalking out there, have you?"
He passed it anyway.
On the Touou sideline, Momoi noticed the shift in Aomine's expression as the ball reached him. It wasn't the familiar arrogance of a player who expected to score. It was something different. Quieter.
"You're all really good," Aomine said, settling into triple-threat position. His voice had dropped. "That's great. It means the training I've been putting in hasn't been wasted."
Yagami's expression hardened slightly. "I knew it. You've been holding back."
"Ha. You say that like you know me."
Aomine moved without preamble - a hard stepback. Yagami tracked it and rose with him.
Aomine launched the ball toward the rim and immediately came back down, stepping around Yagami's contest before his feet touched the floor.
The ball struck the backboard and came off hard. Uozumi and Wakamatsu crashed for the rebound simultaneously, but the bounce was violent and neither of them caught it cleanly.
Aomine had already calculated where it would go.
He caught his own miss, drove into the paint in one motion, and went up against Uozumi who had spun to challenge him.
"Uozumi!" Ikegami shouted.
Uozumi turned and jumped, both hands reaching.
The collision was complete. Aomine was airborne at full extension into Uozumi's chest. He held his body together through the contact with the kind of core strength that shouldn't exist in a high school player, maintained his balance through a moment that should have ended the play, and drove the ball down through the rim over Uozumi's arms.
The foul call came immediately.
"Ryonan number four, blocking foul! The basket counts! One free throw to follow!"
An impossible sequence. A deliberate miss used as a setup. A planned rebound off his own shot. A finish through full contact against the Kanagawa finals center.
"He planned that from the beginning," Sendoh said, his smile gone. "The shot wasn't a real attempt - it was to create the separation from Yagami and get the cutting angle. Then he received his own rebound and finished himself."
"A self-designed alley-oop," someone in the stands said. "He threw it off the board and caught it himself?"
Aomine missed the free throw.
Ryonan 88, Touou 87.
Ikegami exhaled with obvious relief. Uozumi's expression was locked on the empty space above the rim, processing what had just happened to him.
Then he noticed Aomine's expression.
The smile on Aomine's face wasn't the gloating look of someone who had just embarrassed a defender. It was something more dangerous.
Possession change. Ryonan on offense.
Sendoh crossed halfcourt and immediately found himself trapped by Imayoshi and Sakurai converging together, both of them pressing with coordinated aggression, cutting off every dribble angle and passing window simultaneously. The double-team was airtight.
Coach Harasawa watched from the sideline without expression. For a team built on individualism, this level of coordinated execution was an unusual sight for anyone who knew Touou's history. Most years, each player solved problems the way he knew best. The instinct toward individual solutions wasn't stubbornness - it was simply that for most of them, individual solutions worked.
But this year's team had something that changed the equation.
Among all the first-years, only two had cracked the starting lineup. One was Aomine, the absolute offensive force with no defensive obligation. The other was Sakurai - outwardly ordinary, quietly exceptional in two specific areas that no statistical column adequately captured: his release speed and his defensive rotation instincts. In a lineup full of players who defaulted to isolation, Sakurai and Imayoshi had developed an almost automatic partnership, a two-man coverage system that operated without verbal communication.
Sendoh scanned through the trap. Yagami was occupied with Aomine and couldn't serve as a release valve.
He found the crack. The pass threaded through the double-team and reached Ikegami standing free at the top of the lane.
Ikegami caught it and immediately drove straight at the basket.
Fukuda cut from the opposite side, reading the movement.
Touou's defense contracted around the paint.
Ikegami couldn't find the passing angle. He ran out of options and committed, rising off the free-throw line for the floater.
"Ikegami! Behind you!"
Aomine's chase-down block came from nowhere. He arrived from a full sprint behind Ikegami and drove the ball out of bounds with force that left no ambiguity about the intent.
Wakamatsu secured possession. Ryonan sprinted back.
Aomine received an outlet pass at Touou's backcourt and pushed it himself - already faster than anyone attempting to match him on the run, his pace building by the step.
"He's too fast!" Ikegami tried to cut the angle and got left behind completely. Aomine ran through the ghost of his positioning without contact.
Sendoh and Yagami exchanged a look. Both turned and dropped back toward the paint simultaneously.
Aomine hit the lane at full speed. The three-man triangle of Sendoh, Uozumi, and Yagami formed across the restricted area, blocking every path to the rim.
"No angle! Kick it out, Aomine!" Wakamatsu called from the right corner.
Aomine ignored him completely. He rose into the three defenders without slowing down.
All three went up with him. Six arms formed a wall between Aomine and the basket.
Aomine's body carried past the baseline. He was descending. The shooting window had closed entirely from every conventional angle.
In the half-second before his feet touched the floor, Aomine tucked his core, used the last fraction of his hang time to rotate his shoulders, and released the ball high overhead - not toward the front of the backboard, not from a normal angle, but from behind it, launching the ball on an arc that crested above and behind the rim before it curved back down toward the net.
The ball dropped through.
Ryonan 88, Touou 89.
"What."
That single word captured every reaction in the building more accurately than anything longer could have.
The third quarter buzzer sounded.
Aomine landed on the baseline and turned to find Yagami. His mouth pulled into a smile.
"All right. Round two. Let's go."