Kaho didn't pay attention to the confessions her teammates bore into the basketball pillow. Her eyes were trained on a blade of grass, just inches from her crossed legs as she struggled not to look at Naseru. She was sure he felt her stare when she'd heard him scream, and she wondered if he heard her confession. And worse still, she couldn't get the sound he made out of her head. It was so raw, so anguished, like he had just been maimed in front of blind eyes and deaf ears. Kaho bit her lip throughout the rest of the exercise, and could taste blood in her mouth by the time it was over. She felt sick to her stomach. She swallowed the lump forming in her throat and took a long slow breath. When Taiga had the pillow again, he handed it back to Coach Tomogawa and got to his feet.
"Anyone fancy a dip, feeling your feelings like that can make a guy very hot under the collar."
Coach Tomogawa elbowed Taiga in the ribs, "Taiga, stop trying to wuss out of practice matches, c'mon."
Coach Itomi stood up and brushed himself down. He helped a few of his team up from the floor, and clapped Captain Isamu on the back. He whispered something in Isamu's ear and sent him on his way. Naseru had gone ahead with the pack, deftly avoiding Jean-Luc, who made a futile attempt to call out to him.
Kaho sighed and uncrossed her legs. She had pins and needles, and yet, even as she flexed her heavy feet, Ryota, Eiji, Yuta and Yamada waited for her. She smiled at them.
"Thanks for waiting for me," she said.
"No problem, Kaho," Ryota said, "Man, that was certainly an exercise, huh?"
"You've got that right," Yuta said.
"It was nice to be included," Yamada said, "I figured that because I didn't play at all last year, Coach would send me off with the other schools' basketball clubs."
"Don't sell yourself short, Ren," Yuta said with a grin, slinging his arm around his shoulder.
Ryota and Eiji held their hands out for Kaho. She took them and allowed them to pull her up.
"Pins and needles?" Ryota asked.
Kaho nodded.
Ryota bent down and gestured for her to hop on his back. She hadn't done this since middle school, people often assumed they were together then. It made Tatsuya insecure. And yet, in that moment, among friends, far from his eyes and his gnawing feelings of inadequacy, Kaho found it freeing to just sling her arms around her friend's neck and have him carry her to the gym.
"Did any of you get mail for the weekend?" Yuta asked, running a hand through his hair.
"No, but if you did, it had better have been to cut this," Eiji said, tugging Yuta's hair.
Yuta flipped him off, and pulled a hair tie from his wrist, pulling his hair up into a bun, "Screw you, Eiji, I look stunning."
Ryota snorted, "No, you really don't."
The boys laughed.
"I got a letter," Kaho said quietly, "I packed it."
"Have you read it?" Yamada asked.
Kaho shook her head, "I completely forgot about it this morning, you know, with the murder and all. I would have gone and read it by now, but you know, we're all under some kind of surveillance."
"Go get it, yeah?" Ryota said shrugging his shoulders and adjusting Kaho's position draped over his shoulders.
"I'll try," she said.
They were the last to arrive, but managed to join the back of the pack, being mobbed by an even greater group of reporters, thrusting microphones and recording devices in their faces. Most weren't saying anything, and those who were appeared to be joking, jeering and making fun of the press.
Kaho felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She slid off Ryota's back and muscled her way into the gym. Her phone buzzed again. She turned to see the basketball clubs were all doing their own things. Akane waved at Kaho from the doorway.
"Oh my God! I don't know what Coach Itomi was thinking leaving me to look after these kids solo but thank God for that caretaker guy. He helped me do a long ass tour of all the rooms so these guys could get their phones, their games consoles, and whatever else. I wasn't going to referee a billion basketball games while the actual teams did whatever that whole thing was."
The main basketball teams, having heard that practice matches were afoot had already begun their own series of warm-ups and drills. Fumiko had a whistle on and was leading Hanagawa in their standard warm-ups, followed by a few yoga poses. Kaho knew, despite not being part of the team for long, that she would likely transition these warm-ups into hot potato, and would throw several balls into the fray, and then they would jog a few lengths of the court. She had plenty of time before the games would even start.
Kaho watched the members of the Kuroyama and Seiran basketball clubs shuffle away from the spaces they had commandeered, picking up their card games, and moving to the benches.
"It sucks that this place doesn't have bleachers. We could have stuffed all those guys up there," Akane mused. She sighed, "Coach Aigawa should have thought about the spares when he made this arrangement."
Kaho shrugged. If Kenta, the reserve's handyman was acting as an escort to take the kids to their rooms, she would be able to get her hands on her letter before bed! It was certainly better to heed her Older Self's warnings when she still had time to, than reflect on potentially having had the same shortcomings, and contemplating the consequences of that. She thought back to Mamoru and his desperation just a few weeks ago, when Kikiyo's life was at stake. Naseru's still hung in the balance. She needed that letter.
Akane was still talking. She prattled on and on, shooting off a list of miscellaneous complaints about the training camp she was chaperoning which were apparently all Taiga's fault. Kaho's eye twitched. She pressed her lips into a fine line and exhaled in a long, loud breath through her nose. She didn't appreciate being the ear for all of Akane's criticisms about her brother, "Is he still about? The caretaker I mean."
Akane nodded, "He should be back any second. He is with the coaches right now, apparently Coach Aigawa wants to do that pillar thing again, so he needs that Hanako chick."
Kaho pursed her lips, again with her talking about Taiga. Would she have the audacity to do this if it had been Coach Itomi who organised the training camp? On the one hand, letting the team do the stepping stones task had evidently been part of Taiga's plan for the training camp, but if the reserve didn't have the staff for it, they'd have to just leave it out, annoying as it was.
"Yeah, My brother has big plans for this retreat, I can see why he'd want to manage to do some of it, since a lot of his plans are in the wind."
A choked-out noise came from Akane. She'd forgotten who Kaho was, or at least, her relationship to the team. Her cheeks burned crimson, all that complaining and criticising and she'd thrust her snippy comments on the one person who had every right to tell him what she'd been saying.
"Ah, uh, sorry. He's doing a great job, you know. Your brother," Akane said, backtracking, her cheeks still burning. She couldn't quite look Kaho in the eye.
"Want to stop by your room?" Akane asked.
Kaho nodded.
"C'mon," she beckoned Kaho to follow her just outside the gym.
Coach Itomi, Coach Tomogawa and Taiga were talking to the guy Kaho had met the previous day.
H was wearing a khaki waistcoat, something he hadn't been wearing the previous day, but unlike his colleagues' his didn't seem like it would close, hanging open over his shoulders. He frowned at the coaches as they barraged him with questions. He was much shorter than them, and had a terse expression on his face.
"Mr Sato!" Akane shouted.
The man turned around and offered her a forced, closed-mouth smile. His thinning hair was brushed off his face with a sheen of sweat, and his wire-framed glasses had broken at the bridge, and were clinging together with electrical tape.
They hadn't been broken last time she saw him.
"Mr Sato," Akane said again, "Can you escort Kaho here to her room? She wants to grab something."
Kenta sighed, sagging his shoulders. He rubbed the sweat from his brow clicked his tongue, winked, and spoke in the husky baritone voice of the local weatherman, Mikitaka Mako, "Course I can, I'm at your service, come rain or shine."
Akane giggled, the use of the weatherman's catchphrase really adding to the impression. The coaches rolled their eyes.
Kenta led the way to Kaho and Fumiko's shared room. The trek, one that should have only taken five minutes, felt endless. The police probably weren't aware of all the kids running to their rooms for snacks, games and phones, but that wasn't for Kaho to judge. She had a sudden gnawing feeling in her stomach that she needed her letter. She needed to know she hadn't succumbed to the same mistakes her Older Self had done. So, she sucked it up. Kaho nodded along while Kenta used her as a sounding board for his impressions, baiting her to guess who he was imitating with a range of different voices.
"You should have gone into acting," Kaho said, "The anime industry could use someone like you."
Kenta shrugged, "That's kind of you to say, Kid. But that dream is long dead."
Kaho frowned and lowered her head.
"This is me!" she exclaimed when she turned the corner and saw the tiny cabin room she and Fumiko had been sharing. She bolted from where Kenta waited and unlocked the door, slamming it behind her. She was sure he probably thought she needed the toilet, and she didn't care to argue. Instead, Kaho rummaged through her luggage and tore the familiar black envelope with the red wax seal from underneath a sweatshirt.
'Kaho,
This trip is very important. Your basketball brained brother is going to come into his own – did I ever tell you that he prays to a pantheon of professional basketballers every morning in the bathroom? He wrote a memoir before he died in my timeline. Most of it was writing about the dreams he never realised in this time, but your Taiga is young. Your Taiga still loves basketball more than anything else. Your Taiga hasn't had his heart broken irreparably. Your Taiga still finds joy. He hasn't been corrupted. I miss that Taiga. My Taiga died spiteful and resentful.
But today – my Taiga, now your Taiga is going to use one of his old coach's methods to help support the team. You need to pay a lot of attention to what he says here, and what he does. Your teammates will take this seriously. But keep a close eye on Naseru. Always keep a close eye on him. If Naseru's page is blank, that's a bad sign that he's still on the wrong path. You need to try and get him to write something.
But, there is something more important and dangerous underfoot. There is a killer in your midst, and if nothing changes, three people will die before he's caught.
The first man he will kill will be in the early hours of today. He will kill a man called Mr Tanaka, who was a guest at the lodge. Mr Tanaka was an archaeologist looking for proof of legendary places. He was looking in those same pools Taiga wanted you to fish in for a historical artefact.
You wouldn't have been able to pick Mr Tanaka out of a lineup, and that's okay, some deaths are unavoidable, and there is nothing you could have done, but his next victims are closer to home – Kaho – he intends to kill a girl called Kiminara Akane, she's a chaperone from Kuroyama Academy and when the police suspect her baby brother, Shoji, which they did before, he killed himself. You need to keep Akane safe, and prevent her from being hurt. If you can keep Kiminara Akane safe, you will save her and her brother's lives. Please, try, Kaho.
The best way to do that is to stay away from the murderer. Please, stay far away from Sato Kenta, the handyman.'