The first thing that greets the Rakuzan Basketball Team upon their return to the high school is Ryouta's embarrassingly mournful howling. Despite repeated skype calls just to 'hear his barking- is he sad? Oh I hear him, he's so sad, pet him for me' from the regulars and supporters who travelled to Tokyo for the Winter Cup, they've missed him dearly, and he's missed them. Ryouta bounds out of the lobby and down the driveway as the bus disgorges them, dancing in and around all their feet as tears stream down many faces at this homecoming. Reo can't help but compare Kise Ryouta's lovely, laughing face, that glint of absolute, unbounded joy. Akashi runs a hand down his flank, as though in memory of the same.

Ryouta, ecstatic, abases himself.

A sleek black form detaches itself from the bushes and saunters towards them, black tail held high. Reo detaches himself from the crowd and lets Daiki ram into his shins, making the grumbly engine-rrrrr of his purr.

Daiki had clawed three seniors across the forearms rather than let himself be packed up to follow them to Tokyo, but reports indicated he had roamed the empty corridors calling for them and found to his dissatisfaction that there was no one there to scratch his belly.

Which, really. Serves the little terror right. Reo remembers Aomine Daiki, standing in the stands to lead Seirin's cheer, the terror of Teikou's starting lineup with tears running down his face. With Daiki the cat condescending to stand still to be petted, however, tail raised in the air like an imperative, Reo can just about forgive the jerk he was named for.

Daiki turns his head under Reo's hand. He has something in his mouth, still purring around it, and Reo goes to his knees to see what Daiki's found this time.

Daiki spits out a furry shape, limp and stained with blood, onto Reo's pristine white-clad knees. While Reo stares at it, it stirs, bares a mouth full of white teeth, and squeaks angrily.

That's all that Reo remembers, really. Then he faints.

.0.

When Reo comes to, draped artistically over a duffel bag as a very kind first-year sponges his face with a wet towelette, they've moved indoors, the spectators have been dismissed, and the animal has been placed inside the box which held their second place trophy. Akashi has firm hold of Daiki, now cradled into the crook of their captain's arm looking sorry for himself.

"We think it's a weasel," says Nebuya, offering Reo an arm up.

"Is it okay?" says Reo, hauled up quickly by Nebuya's massive bicep. "I mean, did Daiki-"

"Still alive," reports Koutarou. Beat. Check into the box. "I mean, for now."

Reo delicately closes his eyes.

"I've called a local wildlife sanctuary," says Higuchi-san calmly, returning to the centre of the action. "They have a veterinarian on staff and they've identified our photograph as a male juvenile Japanese weasel, they don't think his injuries are life-threatening."

Akashi nods. "Do you have the address?" he says. "I've notified my driver, I will take this animal to the center and see that it is put into the right hands."

"You're… not going to keep it?" says Mayuzumi, who sometimes forgets that when he talks, other people can hear him. It's a habit that's frankly made him very unpopular with the rest of the basketball club. "You're not going to name it? Pet it? Anthromorphize it to represent your tattered and failed relationships with your closest friends and beloved teammates? With your real team?"

"No," says Akashi without a blink. "I'm going to return the wild animal to the wild, where it belongs. Higuchi-san, can you take charge of Daiki? He needs a bath."

Their indefatigable manager takes Daiki from Akashi's hands, even as a well of silence envelopes the Rakuzan High Men's Basketball Team.

"You don't… want to keep it?" says Hayama.

Akashi blinks at him. "Of course not," he says. Repeats. "It's a wild animal and it belongs in the wild."

"Do you-" says a first-year in an act of heroically suicidal courage. He looks at Ryouta sitting panting at his feet for strength. "Do you want to name it? I think it kind of… looks like… Hayama-sempai…"

Akashi turns a perfectly level gaze onto the first year, as the moment stretches out far too long.

A car screeches into the driveway. Akashi glances at it. "It's here, I will return after I am done." He picks up the towel-covered box and strides out the glass doors.

"I don't look like a weasel," says Hayama belatedly. No one pays attention to this. The car peels off down the driveway, speeding away an Akashi none of them are sure they know.

Nebuya is the first to stir. "He's… he's right, you know," he offers up. "It's not a pet."

Ryouta whines, looking from face to face for the source of the unhappiness.

"Of course he wouldn't have kept it," says Mayuzumi, too-loudly in the echoing silence. No one likes him. Reo still doesn't like him. "He's got more than enough pets. He doesn't want any more."

.0.

Contrary to the nightmare that jerks Reo out of sleep early, there aren't a pair of eyeballs floating in a jar in the denuded Basketball Club trophy case when he returns to school a week after they've lost the Winter Cup. This is a relief. He arranges Sei-chan's fronds in pride of place where the sun filters gently through a north-facing window into the regular's clubroom, and gently spritzes the damp earth with nutrient-enriched water. They're going to need to be careful of overwatering it, and Reo knows exactly the Mozart concertos that are going to be best for little Sei-chan's growth. Someone should make a list.

The school has just opened after the New Year's holiday. Tetsuya the Fourteenth, moved into the clubroom for easy access by his caretakers while the dorms shut down, emerges from his flowerpot cave to inspect the intruder. Reo is beginning to have very mixed feelings about Akashi's pets, now that he's met- or at least seen- the originals.

Tetsuya the Fourteenth glares and turns sideways so that Reo can see his tailfins.

"It's okay," he says aloud to Sei-chan and Tetsuya alike. "Akashi's okay." Even after the disaster and a half that was the Winter Cup Finals.

Tetsuya the Fourteenth drifts to the surface of the tank, disinterested in Reo's wishes, and lips at the air for food.

.0.

The tacit agreement to not talk about what happened at the Winter Cup doesn't apply to Sei-chan. Situated right in the thick of the action, any time that someone passes in and out of the locker room, even just to grab their jerseys, they drop a quick greeting to Sei-chan. Centers with the sensitivity of concrete blocks wind up pouring their hearts out to Sei-chan as they pound iron, carrying his- its, its- pot into the weight rooms and straining out every impassioned word to the stems waving gently in the gymnasium air-conditioning. No one fights over Sei-chan. He's passed from boy to boy whenever someone else needs a listening plant.

The opposite applies to Akashi. No one else is interested in bringing anything up to him. No one is speaking to him on a friendly, day-to-day basis, though admittedly, this isn't much of a change from before. His disinterest in the plant Sei-chan, as a decoration, as a pet, as a repository of human hopes and fears, doesn't change.

One time, Akashi pauses after pulling off his shirt and examines Sei-chan.

"Reo," he says, thoughtful.

Reo freezes with his shirt half over his head, turning his head in the direction of the light, the light. "Yes?" he says, trying not to sound painfully eager.

"Sei-chan is getting too big for that pot," Akashi says. His brow is knitted, looking at the innocent fronds. "See to it, please."

"Yes," says Reo, defeated.

"We have a practice game in Tokyo this weekend," Akashi adds. "It's Kuroko's birthday."

"Wait, what?" says Reo.

.0.

"Go away," says Murasakibara Atsushi pre-emptively when Reo sidles up to him, and not just to get a little closer to that gorgeous shooting guard who's just transferred into Yousen.

"Atsushi," chides Himuro Tatsuya.

Reo could cry. This is what he wants with Akashi, this easy intimacy, this casual camaraderie. It's not too much to ask, surely. They haven't fallen so far from grace. Reo can be a surly jerk with an ego the size of the Tokyo Tower, if that's what their captain wants.

"I don't want to see another picture of that stupid hamster," says Murasakibara.

"This isn't about the hamster," says Reo. Himuro Tatsuya's visible eye crinkles, because the hamster is very possibly the best thing that has happened to him all year.

"And I don't want to talk about Aka-chin," says Murasakibara. He folds his arms and glares. He pouts a little, too. It would be unbearably cute if he wasn't an overindulged, annoying monster.

Reo throws up his hands. "Then what are we supposed to do with him?" he demands, but quietly. Akashi, quite happily, is showing Coach Araki pictures of the hamster, on the ipad their new manager has taken to carrying around for expressly this purpose. There's nothing for creating instant harmony like showing pictures of the pets to anyone victimized by their namesakes.

"How should I know?" says Murasakibara callously. "It's not like we're on such great terms anyway."

But you are, Reo wants to shout, you are.

.0.

Reo takes bandages, some double-sided tape, and grapes with him to see Shintarou. The bandages and tape are to fulfill his promise to Shuutoku's point guard, and the grapes are to bribe the tortoise into standing still.

The promise is an excuse to see Akashi.

"I have a present for Shintarou," says Reo. He lifts the bunch of grapes in illustration. There is probably never going to be a good way to explain that Reo owes Takao Kazunari for taking vengeance on Akashi's best friend for his snide plant gift. Or to convey what revenge.

"Be my guest," murmurs Akashi, turning a page. Reo smiles somewhat helplessly at him and turns to get to work. He lays out the grapes and the bandages, and then looks into Shintarou's tank.

Shintarou is standing on a rock.

A rock with eyes stuck onto it.

Reo can't speak past the lump in his throat. Akashi sees him staring, and smiles at the rock- a smile that Reo has never seen before.

"Thank you for the grapes, Reo," says Akashi, as though Reo can't see the rock, that rock, right there. "When he wakes up, I'm sure Shintarou will appreciate them."

.0.

"It's what," says Nebuya, loudly.

It's a terrible phone picture, taken at an awkward angle with Reo's hand behind his back, but they get the gist. They have to. It's not like it's a Dali painting.

"It's a pet!" says Reo, unable to keep the joy out of his voice. "He got another one! A pet!"

"He got a rock," says Nebuya.

"Let's face it, you gorilla, he could have gotten another one of you!" purrs Reo. "Focus on the positive. He got a pet! He's back. He's okay."

"How is this okay," says Nebuya. "I thought we were trying to get him to stop getting pets. How is this better?"

But it is, it is, even when the rock starts showing up everywhere, all kinds of inconvenient and horrifying, its googly eyes set ever so slightly askew. The trophy shelf in the clubroom. The bench next to the water coolers nearest the basketball courts. On top of the free weights in the gym.

"He," says Akashi, walking in on them staring into Tetsuya's tank wondering if the rock is really in there, being gently lipped by Tetsuya the sixteenth. "Eikichi."

Well, then.

.0.

The next shoe doesn't take nearly so long to drop.

The huge bird cage is in the common room in the dorm in the morning, and everyone is standing around it muttering to themselves and each other until Akashi returns from his morning ten mile run and removes the cover, revealing…

"Kou-chan and Reo-chan," murmurs Akashi. He's barely sweating, his hair is curling at the edges from the run, and he has a mad, mad glint in his eye.

Reo's missed it.

Two absolutely lovely lovebirds lift their heads from under their wings and blink at them. Reo can't help gasping at how pretty they are, their shining colours and their bright eyes. Their cage is bright and airy and four feet tall, full of little play areas and hiding-holes, perches and treats.

"I thought since the weather…." says Akashi, though his voice falls away as Reo leans forward and stares into the gleaming black eyes.

"You could have gotten… one," says Reo, grasping for sanity.

"I couldn't, Reo, please," says Akashi. He sounds remarkably pleased with himself, watching the light reflect off their feathers. "They're social animals."

"Kou!" calls one, leaping to perch on the bars of the cage, swiveling its head this way and that to take them all in. "Kou! Kou! Kou!"

'Oh," says Higuchi-san, his voice a pale and distant imitation of calm. "You've. You've taught them their names."

"Aren't they clever," says Akashi, gazing into the cage. He almost looks misty-eyed as he whistles to Reo-chan to get its attention. "Who's a clever bird?"

.0.

Mayuzumi, alone among the basketball club members a hundred strong, remains convinced that the parrots are a menace. As is typical of him, Akashi has their cage placed in the common room and they spend all day and half the night singing and calling to each other, screaming imploringly to members of the basketball club as they leave and exit the room. But when the birds put their heads to the side and coo their own names, bobbing up and down with excitement to see the members of the basketball club, it's hard to remember what the Uncrowned were ever worried about in the first place.

"We were worried?" says Nebuya.

"We kinda were but a whole lot happened after that," says Hayama.

"I was very worried," says Reo. "I'm glad that Sei-chan's okay."

Okay for an operative term of the word, anyway. It's a little galling to think that Midorima Shintarou's lectures about not! indulging! Akashi! into! walking all over! you! were correct.

"Well," says Hayama reflectively. "Could have been worse. I could have been a weasel."

"Or," says Nebuya bitterly, "you could have been a rock."

"You're a perfectly nice rock," says Reo consolingly.

Mayuzumi ignores all of them, even though they all know he's there.

It's a first-year on filter rotation who reports that a small collage of pictures has appeared on the wall above Akashi's desk, a weasel being weighed, tagged and unhappy about it, pink mouth bared in a snarl. Next to the photo, the very nice letter from the very nice scientists at the sanctuary assures them he's doing well after his release back into the wild and commends them for taking such interest in his progress. Under the photo, in Akashi's beautiful calligraphy, Koutarou.

Mayuzumi didn't want to be a weasel, either.

.0.

"Well," says Mayuzumi, who, stubbornly and amazingly, is still reading harem-plotline pink-covered novels on the roof in freezing March with his college entrance exams looming. "He's back to normal. It's over, right? It's fine."

"Well," says Reo. "Not yet." He waits to see if the implications of this latest pet-acquisition spree of Akashi's have occurred to their senior. He wouldn't have come up here for just anything, bringing Ryouta with him to gambol happily among the industrial concrete.

Mayuzumi finally sets down that damn book of his to frown at Reo. "He won't get one of me," he says.

"How can you be sure?" says Reo neutrally.

"He doesn't like me," says Mayuzumi. And neither do you and it's mutual, his expression communicates. Ryouta comes to Mayuzumi's side and noses happily into his lap, pleading with giant chocolate eyes to be petted and loved. Mayuzumi obliges, signalling the conversation over.

Perhaps.

.0.

It's nothing but beautiful fate all the way down that Reo is present when Mayuzumi is returning Daiki to Akashi, holding the complaining cat inside the shreds of his jacket, with a look on his face that suggests he too would like to spit and hiss into Akashi's face.

"Akashi!" yells Mayuzumi. He hammers twice on Akashi's door. "I need to give you back your stupid cat!"

"You can't bring Daiki in here," calls Akashi.

"Why the fuck not," demands Mayuzumi.

"Chihiro is in here," says Akashi, supremely calm. "Out of his cage."

Mayuzumi drops his jacket, and Daiki takes the chance to escape, becoming a black, screaming blur down the hallway.

"Daiki's gone," says Reo, seizing the opportunity. "Can we come in?"

"Of course," says Akashi.

Reo pushes in the door while Mayuzumi stands stock-still in his shirtsleeves, staring straight ahead frozen between anger and shock. Akashi is lying on his bed propped up by pillows, gazing innocently at them from his supine position.

Chihiro peeks out from under the shadow of Akashi's arm, and runs down his leg. At Akashi's knee, the rat sits up, peers at them, and sniffs the air.

"Close the door behind you," Akashi reminds them.

Reo, unwilling to miss a single beautiful moment, kicks the door shut behind them.

Chihiro is frightened by the noise and turns and runs back up Akashi's leg, vanishing under Akashi's torso to climb his pillow and start eating Akashi.

"Oh," says Akashi. "He's grooming me."

Mayuzumi makes his first noise in nearly three straight minutes, a weird in-outtake of breath.

The rat continues to lick and nibble Akashi's ear, Akashi's temple, the fine soft tips of Akashi's hair.

"Chihiro, that tickles," says Akashi, reaching up to grab the rat. He cups it in his hands and runs his thumbs over the fine grey coat. The rat squeaks.

"I'm sorry, Mayuzumi-san," Akashi says, holding the rat, the pet rat, the rat he bought and lets run over him and named after their ex-PF, Reo is going to expire right this second and die completely complete, "you had something to say to me about Daiki?"

Mayuzumi gives him a look like the legions of hell, turns on his heels, and barges out the door.

"Shame," says Akashi. "Reo, would you like to pet him? Chihiro is very friendly."

.0.

Mayuzumi pointedly avoids them all for the graduation ceremony, skipping it entirely. He expresses, without any doubt, that he would very much like to forget that this period of his life even existed.

Nevertheless, Reo arms himself with gardening shears, a book, and two members of the horticultural club.

Ryouta has the job of ambushing Mayuzumi, and Nebuya makes sure that the third-year is delivered to the locker room, where Hayama will guard the door.

Once Mayuzumi sees Akashi, he realises it's useless to call for help.

"What do you want?" he says. Crosses his arms. Uncrosses them.

Reo takes the small pot out from behind his back. Mayuzumi looks at it. "What is that?" he says, even though it's clearly a small Sei-chan stem, transplanted.

"We almost forgot to get you a graduation present," says Reo, smiling so hard his face hurts. "I can't believe we overlooked it."

Mayuzumi stares at him, then stares at Akashi, then gets mixed up and ends up glaring at the plant.

Sei-chan's leaves wobble.

"Your very own Sei-chan!" says Reo. "He's growing so well, we thought we'd get you a cutting from him." Reo pauses for effect. "You know. As a graduation present. To thank you for being on the team with us."

Akashi, for possibly the first time since this entire thing has begun, looks badly like he wants to laugh.

Mayuzumi, clearly resolving to throw out the plant as soon as possible, stretches out his hands and takes it. "Thank you," he forces out between gritted teeth. "I'll take good care of… 'Sei-chan'."

"Will we get Sei-chans?" wonders Hayama. "Next year."

"Why not?" says Reo, drunk on success. "Sei-chans for everyone!"

"You gotta remember to talk to it," says Nebuya to Mayuzumi. "He gets lonely without friends."