Susa sighed heavily, but nodded to Takao and left him to his own devices.

Something seemed to occur to Takao: he leaned over and looked right into Aomine Daiki’s eyes. The other first-year was lying stretched out on the rug behind the low sofa, interrupted in the middle of rereading the photobook he’d come in to find.

“Damn, I knew I’d forgotten something,” said Takao. “I thought you’d gone.”

“You have the air-conditioning on,” said Aomine. He yawned, and sat up. He’d only meant to drop in for a few minutes and get his Mai-chan photobook. Takao returned his attention to the screen, clearly not caring if Aomine had come or stayed for the afternoon practice or not. He leaned a little forward and watched the figures moving on the tiny-ass club loan laptop screen, utterly absorbed.

“What are you watching, anyway?” said Aomine, peering over his shoulder. “Wow, those are some ugly-ass uniforms.”

“Momoi got it for me,” said Takao. “District matches. Shuutoku vs. Seirin.”

Aomine glanced swiftly at Takao’s face. “You’ve been in here for like, two hours,” he said.

“Coach said I could,” said Takao. “It’s too crowded out there, anyway.” In silence, they watched Midorima Shintarou, unmistakable, wind up and take his shot. Seirin flew past him, Kagami Taiga hard on his heels, but Midorima turned and jogged back to his own hoop.

“The seniors are the inside,” said Aomine, interested despite himself. “Midorima and that number ten are the outside play, but because he’s so green and so jumpy, Midorima’s basically stuck covering the rest of the court by himself. He can’t concentrate on scoring like he wants to, and when he does, Tetsu slips past him.”

Takao looked at him.

“I’m really good at this,” said Aomine. “I mean, you may not know.” He yawned. Midorima had lost this match? To him? Kise, too. “They got the best of him while he was slacking off.”

He snorted to himself, thinking it over. “Would have been better for him to give up some of that space to his seniors and let them ease Ten off, too,” he said. “Between them there should have been enough experience to keep him calm and cover the court, and then they wouldn’t have embarrassed themselves like that.”

“Would you?” said Takao. There was no indication that he was actually interested in the answer: that was why Aomine bothered to give him one.

“I wouldn’t need to,” said Aomine. “I’m not so dead set on my one stunt trick that I’d let someone like that hand me my ass.”

“Heeeeeh,” said Takao, still completely uninterested. He was looking at Kagami Taiga smacking the ball out of Midorima’s hands, and the prissy look of affront and shock on his former teammate’s face was enough to make Aomine laugh.

Takao, however, was not laughing.

On the screen, Shuutoku’s number ten- a shrinking, flinching first-year, who kept screaming SORRY at his teammates- once again fumbled a pass. He had speed, but was too damn shy of his own team, let alone the ones he was playing against.

“Why him, anyway?” said Aomine.

“I played against him once,” said Takao, without asking who Aomine meant. “I mean, maybe also the rest of you. I don’t remember it too well. Mostly I remember my whole team crying afterwards like we were all dying or something. It was devastating.”

“Uh,” said Aomine.

“He pissed me off,” said Takao. “Fucking Midorima Shintarou. Better by himself than all the rest of us put together.” He hit the button, and once again the cd jumped to where Kagami Taiga had smacked down that unstoppable three-pointer Midorima was so famous for, like Takao had memorised where it was on the video.

“I mean, you don’t like your opponents or teammates either,” said Takao, brutally insightful. “We’re ants to you. we don’t matter. But to him…” His mouth twisted. “We’re even less than that. We don’t matter at all. We’re air.”

This was not entirely true, but Aomine didn’t want to waste time explaining Midorima (Tetsu, Teikou) to someone who would never understand why it was not true, and couldn’t have even if Aomine had wanted to. “If you want to murder him Momoi probably has his address,” said Aomine, just as brutally. “If you wanna beat him, you’re shit out of luck. Seirin knocked them out of the Interhigh, we’re not looking to come up against them until Nationals, that’s in the fall. He already lost.”