Chapter 114 - Thank You
"Unbelievable. We're heading into the fourth quarter and Ryonan is down by one."
In a corner of the stands, the Seirin players had been watching since tip-off. Despite being in the same regional qualifying tournament, the distance between their two programs was stark. When Seirin had faced Touou in the Tokyo bracket, the final margin had been fifty points. The gap in class had not been ambiguous.
Yet from the opening minute of this game, Ryonan had played Touou even. The deficit had never once grown beyond ten points on either side.
Aida Riko was still writing. If they advanced, these teams would become opponents, and that made this film study, not entertainment. "So this is the team that beat Kise. And Shohoku before that." She paused. "I'd heard Kanagawa's teams were strong this year. I don't think I fully understood what that meant until today."
"What I can't get over," Hyuga said, "is that they're actually stopping Aomine."
"I wouldn't say that yet." Kuroko's voice was quiet. He was still watching the floor. The two plays Aomine had produced in the final minute of the third quarter were still running in his head on a loop. "I think Ryonan might not be able to hold him anymore."
The buzzer sounded.
Fourth quarter. Touou ball.
Imayoshi brought the ball upcourt, scanning his players. Aomine was stationed on the left wing at the forty-five-degree angle, arm raised, calling for the ball immediately.
Imayoshi hesitated for a fraction. He ran the calculation quickly. All three of the players with the heaviest workloads were showing it now - Aomine, Sendoh, Yagami. Logic said to conserve Aomine for the final minutes.
But Aomine had been quiet for most of the third quarter. The third quarter had ended with back-to-back impossible baskets. His touch and his temperature were at the exact peak of a wave.
Telling him no right now felt like holding a lit match away from kindling and expecting the match to stay lit indefinitely.
"Give me the ball," Aomine said directly, out loud.
Imayoshi let out a short breath and delivered the pass.
"Let's go!" Aomine caught it and Yagami was on him instantly - center of gravity dropped, eyes completely locked, arms wide. No emotion on his face.
"Love the eyes."
Aomine's body shifted from stillness to motion as if a switch had been thrown. He went into a rapid between-the-legs sequence, his shoulders rolling with broad exaggerations, each fake carrying enough conviction to drag a defender's weight in the wrong direction.
Yagami held his position through the rhythm, matching each sway with a short precise slide, keeping his weight centered.
Aomine's first step exploded left. A full-force change of direction with his entire body behind it. Even with Yagami anticipating, even with his footwork already moving to intercept, Aomine's combination of speed and raw physical force carved out half a body width of space before the contact could absorb it.
He drove to the rim. Uozumi rotated to cut him off.
Aomine went up into Uozumi's defense in stride, produced the same extension layup he had used earlier in the game - the ball rolling off the tips of his fingers from somewhere below the rim level, threading through the crook of Uozumi's raised arm - and flicked it softly off the glass.
It dropped through.
Ryonan 88, Touou 91.
Possession change. Ryonan on offense.
Yagami used Ikegami's screen to cut baseline toward the paint. Aomine fought through the screen and reappeared directly in front of him.
Yagami didn't stop. He drove into the contact, turned his back, and used the momentum of the screen to put his body between Aomine and the ball.
As Yagami's torso rotated through, the ball came off the dribble low and hard, traveling through the space below Aomine's reach and beneath his line of sight.
It hit the floor at the perfect angle and redirected cleanly into the paint.
Uozumi caught it on the catch-and-lean, drove Wakamatsu back two steps, and threw down a two-handed dunk.
Ryonan 90, Touou 91.
Possession change. Touou on offense.
Aomine received on the right wing. He came up with a shot fake, felt Yagami's weight rise in response, immediately drove hard to the right. Uozumi came across to help. Aomine planted his left foot and spun back left, pulling up with a smooth turn-and-release over both of them.
Yagami's outstretched hand arrived a fingertip short.
Ryonan 90, Touou 93.
Possession change. Ryonan on offense.
Sendoh was being doubled again the moment he touched the ball - Imayoshi and Sakurai finding him with the same coordinated trap they had been running all second half. Yagami took over the ball-handling responsibility, threading a pass between Aomine's reaching hands to Ikegami on the weak side. Ikegami found Fukuda cutting baseline.
Wakamatsu came from nowhere and blocked Fukuda's attempt clean, sending the ball out of bounds.
"That's what I want to see down there!" Imayoshi called out. "We play with that energy too!"
The referee signaled Wakamatsu for the foul.
Fukuda stepped to the line. He made one of two.
Ryonan 91, Touou 93.
Possession change. Touou on offense.
Imayoshi looked right, found Aomine in space, and without hesitation delivered the ball.
Aomine caught it on the right wing. He took one hard between-the-legs dribble and launched - a deep stepback three-pointer with enormous range, well beyond the arc, with Yagami still catching up to his position when the ball left his hand.
Clean through.
Ryonan 91, Touou 96.
Five points. More than one possession.
Coach Taoka's hand went to his mouth for one breath, then came down.
"Timeout."
The whistle blew.
In the huddle, Taoka looked at the faces around him and sorted through what he was seeing. The arrangement from the start of the second half had been for Yagami and Sendoh to rotate the primary Aomine assignment between them, sharing the physical cost. Yagami's effectiveness had pushed Taoka to leave him on Aomine longer than the original plan called for.
The results had been real. Yagami had limited Aomine genuinely. The stops had been legitimate.
But Aomine Daiki was not a machine that degraded with use. He was something closer to the opposite.
Yagami was doing everything right. His footwork hadn't broken down, his positioning was still precise, his reads were still sharp. He was executing at the ceiling of what his current body and preparation could produce.
And Aomine was still accelerating.
Coach Taoka had seen a lot of remarkable players in his career. Some of them had arrived with enormous talent and developed slowly into what they could be. Some had burned briefly and brightly and then leveled off. In thirty years of coaching he had never looked across a court at a first-year high school player and been unable to see the ceiling.
"Yagami, Sendoh." He kept his voice even. "Here's what we're doing from this point on."
The timeout ended.
Play resumed.
Ikegami caught Sendoh's pass in the mid-range and made the decision quickly, going straight up for the jumper before the defense could recover.
It went in off the backboard.
Ryonan 93, Touou 96.
Touou ball. Imayoshi pushed across halfcourt and fed Aomine on the right wing.
From the left side, Sendoh immediately broke toward the ball.
Kise had predicted this in the stands before it happened. He had been waiting to see it since the second quarter.
Yagami and Sendoh converged on Aomine from two sides.
"Damn it!" Today's first genuine alarm crossed Imayoshi's face.
He knew with complete certainty that Aomine would not pass. He had operated under that certainty all game and organized Touou's offense around it. An Aomine double-team that forced a pass would have required a separate set of contingencies that the game plan hadn't accounted for.
"Two people can't hold me!"
Aomine's eyes darkened. He dropped his shoulder into the trap and tried to physically muscle through the gap between Yagami and Sendoh, using pure force to manufacture a lane.
Both of them absorbed the contact and held their positions.
"Aomine!" Imayoshi moved to provide an outlet.
Aomine pulled back, creating just enough clearance to raise the ball above the double-team and launch it toward the rim with whatever angle he had managed to find.
It came off hard. The rebound bounced out of reach of both Uozumi and Wakamatsu.
Sendoh used his position to pin Aomine away from the board. Uozumi secured it and immediately turned to find Yagami cutting into the lane.
"Settle this. Controlled possession."
Yagami took the pass and walked the ball up deliberately, letting Touou reset. No rushing. Each possession mattered.
Touou recovered to their half-court positions.
Yagami sized up the defense from just inside the midcourt line, then rose without a dribble and pulled the trigger from two full meters behind the three-point arc.
Aomine, reacting faster than anyone else on the court, launched himself forward and closed out with everything he had, his hand reaching Yagami's eyeline at full extension.
The ball was already gone.
Nothing but net.
Ryonan 96, Touou 96.
Imayoshi looked at the scoreboard for exactly one second, then turned to Touou's offense without reacting.
He brought the ball up and ignored Aomine's outstretched hand on the right wing entirely. His wrist snapped to the left side and the ball flew out to Sakurai curling off a screen from Wakamatsu.
Koshino fought through the screen. He was a beat slow. Sakurai's release was already in motion before Koshino's feet finished adjusting, the ball gone from his hands at a speed that made the window seem like it had never existed.
Three-pointer. Clean.
Ryonan 96, Touou 99.
Ryonan ball. Fukuda received on the right corner, used his body to back Susa away from the lane, got his feet set and rose for a mid-range jumper.
Ryonan 98, Touou 99.
Touou ball. Imayoshi used Wakamatsu's high screen to draw the coverage, then slipped the ball to Susa who had rolled to the elbow. Susa caught it and floated it over Uozumi's reach.
Ryonan 98, Touou 101.
Ryonan ball. Ikegami caught an open pass and went up without hesitation.
Ryonan 100, Touou 101.
Touou ball. Imayoshi pushed into the frontcourt. Aomine called for the ball from the right wing. His voice had an edge in it now.
Imayoshi weighed the situation for a moment and passed it anyway. He had done everything he could to manage the flow of the game. But there was a line past which managing Aomine became its own kind of problem.
Sendoh had been watching for this moment. He started moving toward the double-team before Imayoshi's pass had even fully left his hand. Yagami saw it coming too.
Two seconds. That was the window before the trap arrived.
Aomine took the pass and immediately hit a hard crossover, attacking Yagami's outside foot. Yagami cut off the lane, planting to absorb. Aomine pulled back and loaded for the fadeaway.
Sendoh arrived.
His hand came through from behind just as Aomine extended - a single clean swipe that stripped the ball out of his grip in the gathering motion.
The ball hit the floor. Yagami was already going. He came around Aomine's body in one fluid pivot, picked up the loose ball and accelerated before anyone on Touou had fully understood what had happened.
Aomine was behind him. Imayoshi was the only other player with any angle.
It wasn't close. Yagami crossed the free-throw line and threw it down one-handed.
Ryonan 102, Touou 101.
Ryonan led.
Touou came back with Imayoshi attacking Fukuda's defensive positioning, finding Susa on the cut. Uozumi stepped up and met the ball at its highest point, redirecting it hard out of bounds.
Fukuda grabbed the loose ball off the deflection and went the other way immediately. Sakurai tried to get in his path. Fukuda was already past him in one long stride before the contact could form.
Imayoshi made the calculation and took the foul, reaching in across Fukuda's wrist with an open hand as the last available option.
"Foul on Touou number four."
Fukuda stepped to the line. Both free throws dropped through.
Ryonan 104, Touou 101.
Three points. Half the fourth quarter gone.
Touou called timeout.
Coach Harasawa walked to his players. Aomine was not looking at him. He was looking at the scoreboard.
The number on Ryonan's side. The number on Touou's side.
His head dropped. One long breath.
A second.
A third.
"I wonder when it started," he said to himself, voice barely above a whisper. "When I started yawning on my way out the door on game days."
Another breath.
"When did I stop caring whether I won or lost."
He raised his head slowly and looked across the court toward where the Ryonan players had gathered. His eyes found Yagami in the middle of the huddle.
Yagami happened to glance up at the same moment.
Their eyes met for a brief second across the length of the court.
"Thank you," Aomine said quietly. "Thank you, Yagami."
Everything he had put into training over the past months - the early mornings he hadn't skipped, the sessions he hadn't shortened, the days he had pushed through when the old version of himself would have stopped. He had always known somewhere underneath the boredom what he was building toward.
This moment. This feeling.
One final breath. His eyes closed.
When they opened again, something had shifted behind them - a cold, electric focus that hadn't been there since the game began.
"Open this door."
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