A note from Frog-kun

Stories about stories may seem rather esoteric at times and for that I apologise. Please bear with me. In the writing of this fanfiction, I decided to do some extensive research on the people involved. During my research, I came upon Tōō High. I was eager to talk to the manager, a rather delightful young woman from what I've been told. She was truly the most beautiful high school girl I had ever encountered. Her lascivious figure was perfectly-proportioned, her generous bosoms a feast upon the eyes. It was mostly her pink hair that caught my interest, because I am only interested in marrying a girl with pink hair. No other hair colour would do.

I at once set about introducing myself to her, though she interrupted me before I had gotten my name out.

"Urk! It's a frog!" said she, in a tone that I have trouble convincing myself as being warm and inviting. "I hate frogs! Aomine-kun, squish it! Squish it dead!" Then she said, "Thanks a bunch, Aomine-kun. Wait, why am I thanking you? It's your fault I hate frogs in the first place!"

I wrote these stories during my period of internment in hospital. Please enjoy them.

The Legend of Kuroman – 1

Sometimes, there comes a time in life when a man is so hard up on his cash that he must resort to robbing a bank. Children, please do not try this for yourselves. There will be consequences.

So anyway, this man I was talking about, he decided to do everything he could to make sure his bank robbery was a success. He purchased himself a gun over the black market; he fitted himself out in full black attire. Then he picked a good bank, walked inside and waved his gun around. "Hands on your heads and get down on the floor!" he roared at the customers. They obliged. The robber waited as the tellers filled up his bag with money, all the while keeping a very close eye on all the people in the room, making sure none of them were up to any shifty business that could cause his undoing.

He was just about finished and about to walk out the door when a boy said, "Excuse me."

"What's that you say?" the robber demanded, turning around with a snarl.

"The police are waiting just outside the door," the boy explained patiently.

"What?"

"You did not seem to notice when I walked out the door and called the police," said the boy.

The robber gazed at the boy with a mixture of horror and fury, but in the end, all he could feel was resigned about his fate. He had been outplayed.

And from then on, whispers were uttered between those that were present that day… Eventually, it would form the story of a great hero who saved the streets of Tokyo from evil.

The Legend of Kuroman.

Kuroko no Tennis

There came a time when Coach Aida decided that she had had enough of basketball for the moment. "Listen up, guys!" she announced one morning, at one particular fateful practice session. "Let's take a break from basketball and play a different sport!"

"Um, what sport?" Hyuuga asked.

Aida stood with her hands on her hips and proclaimed:

"Tennis."

"Huh? What for?" asked Kagami, who had no interest or knowledge about tennis whatsoever.

"Wimbledon starts today, that's why," Aida replied.

"Hey, that's true," said Izuki. "I hope Djokovic wins it."

"What's a Wimbledon?" asked Kagami.

The other guys ignored him. They were starting to get enthusiastic about the idea of playing tennis, just for a bit of variety. So Aida promptly arranged for the basketball team to borrow the tennis courts for one afternoon and after school, the boys trudged over to their destination, borrowed tennis racquets in hand.

"This is gonna be so stupid," said Kagami. "Let's just go back to playing basketball."

Instead of agreeing with him, his seniors started bouncing the ball.

"Have at you, Kagami!" Hyuuga roared suddenly – and hit the tennis ball over the net with his racquet.

… It went over really, really slowly. Hyuuga's talent at shooting only allowed him to hit lobs in tennis, it seemed.

Kagami ran over to the ball and held up his racquet. In spite of himself, he was starting to get a little into the game. Just think of it as being like basketball, he told himself.

Kagami's natural talent at sports allowed him to successfully "dunk" the ball over the net. "How's this?" he said grinning. "Dunk smash!"

His seniors shook their heads at him.

"Stop plagiarising other anime," said Aida with a snort.

"Um," Kuroko spoke up for the first time. "May I play too?"

"Sure," said Aida, handing him a racquet. Kuroko tested its weight in his hands for a moment, trying to get accustomed to it.

"Oi, Kuroko, come play with me!" Kagami called out to him. "We'll team up against our senpais!"

Kuroko stepped onto the court. To the surprise and bewilderment of all those watching, Kuroko's misdirection actually seemed to work on a tennis court too. His combination with Kagami was just so good. As the rally ensued, Hyuuga and Mitobe seemed only able to see Kagami on the court, hitting all the returns. At one point, Mitobe, thinking erroneously that the entire half of the court that Kagami was not covering was completely empty, hit the ball straight towards Kuroko.

The freshman trio gasped as Kuroko got to the ball. He was about to show his special move, they were certain.

BAM.

Kagami fell over, knocked over backwards by a tennis ball.

"What was that for?" he demanded furiously.

In response, Kuroko blinked once, very solemnly.

"I thought I was meant to pass it to you."

Kagami's Secret Admirer

It happened one day, when Kagami opened up his shoe locker. A lunchbox wrapped up immaculately in a Hello Kitty cloth tumbled out, followed closely by a bright pink envelope.

"The hell is this?" Kagami wondered aloud.

He proceeded to pay no attention whatsoever to the envelope, opened up the lunchbox and ate everything inside it with one gulp. After that, he forgot all about the incident altogether.

It should have ended there, but it didn't. The next day, he opened up his shoe locker and saw another lunchbox inside, along with another envelope. First, Kagami ate the lunch, and then, finally, he took hold of the envelope and squinted at it, feeling kind of repulsed by its overall pinkness. He was still staring at it as he made his way to the basketball court, trying to figure out who on earth could have sent it to him.

"Hey, Kagami!" said Koganei cheerfully. "What's tha-?" He stopped. His expression froze in horror. "You bastard, Kagami!"

"Huh?" said Kagami stupidly.

"Stop showing off your love letter!" Koganei moaned.

"It's a love letter?"

At this point, Koganei tore the envelope off Kagami and opened it up. "To my dearest Kagami-kun," he read aloud. "This lunch is from your secret admirer, who prepared it with love. Please keep doing your best on the basketball court!" Koganei sniffed and began to cry tears of blood.

"What's this? Kagami's got a secret admirer?" said Kawahata.

"Impossible!" Furihata responded. "Kagami's face frightens small children!"

"You got a problem with my face?" Kagami demanded, leering at him.

The first years gulped.

"Anyway," said Kagami. "I don't care about any secret admirers. As long as I get food, I'm happy."

And this is precisely what happened. Day after day, Kagami opened up his shoe locker to find a neatly wrapped lunch just for him. The weeks passed under this routine, until Kagami began to naturally expect the food to be there as a supplement to his diet.

Gradually, Kagami found that softer feelings surfaced within him as he ate those lunches. He was not a picky eater, but even he could appreciate good cuisine, and his secret admirer appeared to be a master of it. Every day, the contents of the lunch were something different, but always they hit the right taste buds with the right sensations. Kagami was always disappointed when he finished. Not only that, but he became possessive of his lunches and refused to share them with anyone, preferring to eat them alone so he could savour their taste in private. He found himself wondering what kind of person could make such wonderful food.

Then, one night, he had a dream.

He was in a church. Bell chimes were ringing around him and all of his team mates, dressed in their uniforms, were sitting at the pews peering up at him. He was dressed in a white suit and behind him, he could hear a priest speaking to him.

"… take as your lawful wedded wife, to live in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you love, honour, comfort, and cherish her from this day forward, forsaking all others, keeping only unto her for as long as you both shall live?"

"I do," Kagami heard himself say.

"You may now kiss the bride," said the priest.

Kagami turned around and looked at his secret admirer. She was a giant yellow lunchbox. Kagami felt feelings of love and affection swell up inside of him.

"Oh, Food," he said adoringly. "I swear I'll make you happy."

Then Kagami woke up from his dream, smiled, and wolfed down his breakfast.

That day, however, was not fated to be a good one. Because when Kagami opened up his shoe locker, no lunchbox was to be found.

It broke his heart.

He spent a good deal of time searching through his shoe locker, not once, not twice, but approximately twenty-seven times. (The shoe locker was about as big as a shoe box.) He found the pink envelope but no food. No food.

Only after much moping did it occur to him to open up the envelope. So he read it during class, because he never paid attention to his classes anyway.

"To my dearest Kagami-kun," it read. "I hope you have enjoyed my lunches for you up until now. I would like to meet you. It would be my wish to give you lunches in person. Meet me at the rooftop during lunch break today."

Kagami read the whole letter a few times, unable to shake a weighing feeling of something that was perhaps dread. His secret admirer wanted to meet him. It made him nervous.

"Kagami-kun," said Kuroko behind him. Kagami yelped because, as usual, the blue-haired boy seemed to appear out of nowhere. "You should meet her."

"Well, I guess," said Kagami, scratching his cheek. "To get my lunch, right?"

"And to thank her," Kuroko added.

"Oh, yeah," said Kagami, feeling a little guilty that this idea had never even occurred to him.

Kuroko was right, he thought. Thanking his secret admirer was the only right thing he could do. He would be a jerk if he did not feel gratitude for all the food that had been given to him.

As Kagami made his way to the roof, he felt the anticipation rise. It was almost getting hard to breathe. Strangely enough, this was harder than playing against Aomine or something. What did his secret admirer even look like? Strangely enough, it had never occurred to Kagami to even wonder about this. He simply could not begin to imagine.

But the rooftop was empty when he got there. After all that buildup, Kagami could not help but feel a little crushed.

And it was then that he heard the footsteps and the voice.

"Um, Kagami-kun…"

He turned around. There she was. A girl. Straight, long black hair; a sweet, bashful smile; graceful, elegant, cute.

"I don't know where to begin, Kagami-kun," said the girl shyly.

Curiously enough, Kagami felt his face go red. "Talk what you like," he responded, a little more brusquely than he intended.

"Okay," said the girl, fidgeting a little. The wind rolled gently over the rooftop, causing her fine black hair to sway in the breeze. It was vaguely romantic.

"You see, my brother really likes you," the girl said finally.

"What?" said Kagami.

"Yeah," the girl went on, giggling a little. "But he's really shy. He's standing behind me, see? He's really good at cooking, so he made you all those lunches. He's asking me to help out his confession to you, so…"

That was when Kagami noticed the boy standing timidly behind the girl. He had a face like a squirrel, which sadly included the presence of buck teeth. He wore wide-rimmed glasses, almost like goggles, and his face was spotty because of a recent outbreak of acne. He was also much shorter than the girl and when he smiled, he seemed sort of sickly.

"Hello," said the boy in a quiet, strained whisper. "I really, really like you, Kagami-kun. I think you're so amazing."

Kagami opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again.

Several hours later, Kuroko found Kagami at the back of the basketball court in the foetal position, rocking himself back and forth with a numb expression on his face.

"Is something the matter, Kagami-kun?"

Kagami was muttering something deliriously to himself. He was also scoffing down pork buns one after the other, as if he were a man dying of starvation.

"I'll never cheat on you again, Food. You're the only girl for me. I'll never look at another person. Oh, Food, I love you."

"I'm glad you've found your special someone," said Kuroko. And he meant it.

The Legend of Kuroman – 2

It just so happened that one day, when the second years were giving Tetsuya #2 his daily walk, they came across an odd dilemma.

They were just walking along the pavement peacefully when Tetsuya #2 sprang up suddenly and began barking lustily. It turned out that there was a cat stuck up in a tree. It was a pretty feline, all white, fluffy fur and bright amber eyes. Evidently frightened, it clung to the tree branch like a dying man to a rock.

"'scuse me!" a young elementary schoolgirl called out to the boys. She seemed agitated and was standing around the tree biting her lips and pushing against the thick trunk. "My cat's stuck in a tree! Could you help me?"

"Sure thing," responded Hyuuga, who could be a gentleman when he wanted to.

He started to climb up the tree… only to slip off within a second and land flat on his bottom.

"You just bough'ed down to defeat," said Izuki.

"Shut up, Izuki," said Hyuuga automatically.

Next, Koganei tried to reach the cat with his jumps – the jumps of a true, talented basketballer. But since Koganei was neither true nor talented, he did not even make it halfway.

"Looks like there's only one thing we can do now," said the Seirin seniors, putting on their game face.

"Mitobe!" cried Hyuuga. As always, he was the mental core of the Seirin team. It was his rousing speeches that put the heart, soul and motivation into every player. "You must throw your basketball at the cat! Use your hook shot!"

"That'll get it off the tree!" Koganei said eagerly.

"And kill it," added Izuki.

"Uh oh," said Hyuuga. It was clear that Mitobe had only heard what Izuki said after he threw the basketball straight towards the hapless animal. By then, the ball was a mere inch from smashing into the hapless kitten's face.

Then suddenly, the cat was gone.

"Huh? Where'd it go?" the seniors asked, looking around confusedly.

There was an awkward pause, and then they heard a familiar boy's voice. "Here," he said, speaking to the girl. The girl's eyes and mouth opened wide in delight.

While the seniors watched this heart-warming scene, united through their nonplussed expressions, the girl twirled her kitten around in her arms and hugged it tightly against her chest.

"Thank you, Kuroman!"

"Yes," said Hyuuga, numbly. "He's definitely a ninja."

And thus another legend of Kuroman comes to a close…

Unlucky Horoscope

Cancer: Today will be your unlucky day unless you go to a public bath and do the chicken dance.

A tall, green-haired boy pushed up his glasses and nodded firmly.

Like Mother, Like Son

"I just realised," Kagami said one day, as he was hanging out with Kuroko at the fast food store, "you've never told me about your parents."

Now that he thought about it, Kuroko's parents could be anyone. Maybe they were athletes, people who had trained Kuroko to be the type of basketballer he was today. Or maybe Kuroko had never mentioned them before because they were really callous and abusive people who made Kuroko sleep in the cupboard under the stairs. Or maybe Kuroko was an orphan who lived alone in an apartment somewhere. Like everything about the former phantom sixth man, Kuroko's family life was full of mystery.

While Kagami pondered all of this, Kuroko said nonchalantly, "Oh, want to hang out at my place today?"

And thus, without any foreshadowing or buildup whatsoever, Kagami met Kuroko's parents.

Kuroko lived in a small brick house located in a quiet neighbourhood in a quiet suburb. His house looked exactly like the one next door, and the one next door to that. When Kuroko pointed out which one it was, Kagami actually had to squint at it, somehow fearing that it would vanish the moment he blinked.

Inside the house, Kagami was greeted with the epitome of bland interior design. It wasn't that anything was out of place or that the furniture was sparse. Literally nothing stood out.

Kagami decided that he really should have expected this.

"By the way," said Kuroko randomly. "There's my mother."

"Hello," said a woman's voice behind Kagami.

Kagami screamed and jumped five feet in the air.

When he turned around, he found himself looking at a person with blue hair and nonchalant, inexpressive eyes. This person was somewhat short and rather thin, not the type of person that would stand a great deal in a crowd.

"My name's Harumi," said Kuroko's mother.

Kagami stared at Harumi, then at Kuroko, then back at Harumi.

"Aaaaaaarrrrgghhhh! That expression is just like Kuroko's!" Those eyes, it was like they were staring vacantly into his soul!

Before he could say anything more, he stopped noticing Harumi altogether. She went back to the kitchen and started chopping up vegetables.

"That was frightening," Kagami remarked to Kuroko as they sat down at the table. "So what's your dad like? Is he here?"

"Yeah, he's in his room," said Kuroko.

Kagami tried to imagine what Kuroko's father would be like. Probably exactly the same as Harumi, who was the same as Kuroko.

The Kurokos were in-breeding with each other.

Kagami blanched at the thought.

"Oh, there he is," Kuroko said, pointing towards the bedroom door. It opened, revealing Kuroko's father.

Takehiko Kuroko was one of those distinctly good-looking people one occasionally sees in movies or in magazines. He had chiselled features, a strong jaw, piercing blue eyes. He was the type of person that women would probably turn around and ogle at if he walked down the street.

Kagami felt himself die a little bit on the inside.

"Tetsuya, I need your help for a bit," Takehiko said, nudging at his son's arm.

"This is my father," Kuroko said to Kagami.

"Oh, hi there," said Takehiko. "Maybe you could help me too, you know?"

"With what?" Kagami asked. He was still numb from the shock and could not muster an outwardly surprised response.

"Come with me," Takehiko said, in a way that he thought was secretive and discrete but was completely unsubtle. He led the two boys into his room, which was more or less completely dark, except for the bright shine of a computer screen.

On the screen was a picture of a 2D animated girl with blue hair and eyes as wide as saucers. "Do you think this dress suits me?" were the words in the text box beneath her image.

"I don't know which choice to make," said Takehiko. "What do you think will make her like me the most? I just can't tell, you know."

There were three choices:

"Yes, you look really nice!"
"Piss off, I'm busy."
"Your butt looks big."

"I think it's the first one," said Kuroko, after some careful consideration.

Kagami watched on stupidly as Takehiko nervously clicked the first option and was rewarded with a picture of the 2D girl smiling. Takehiko let out a sigh of relief.

"I'm not very good with girls, you know," he explained sheepishly.

"Aren't you married?" Kagami asked.

"Am I?" Takehiko asked back.

"Yes, you are," Kuroko reminded him. "I'm your son."

Takehiko blinked multiple times in surprise.

"Sometimes, I forget all about that," he explained to Kagami. "My wife is just so hard to notice at times, you know?"

And after that fateful visit to Kuroko's home, Kagami could only think of one thing:

Was this what married life to Kuroko would be like?

Fin

(A/N: I'll probably post more short stories as I get the inspiration for them. This is all I've got so far. Hope you liked!)