Chapter Text
The first time it happened, Kuroko passed it off as a stitch. Albeit a strangely pleaced, extremely painful one.
From too much practice, said his fourteen-year old mind, banishing every negatative thought on the matter.
No one cared for the agony that tore through his chest, a wild beast that seized his carotid artery with inhumane force.
The gazes of those who noticed were filled with annoyance.
After all, they were plenty strong now, who needed a pathetic wimp anymore?
If the first time was scary, the second was like death.
The rabid animal was back with a vengeance; cruching his insides in a vice-like grip. Even his lungs forgot how to function in the scorching pain, framing his vision with a fuzzy black layer and forcing his knees to clatter against the dry earth, solid in the heat of summer.
People noticed this time. Well, it was less that the noticed Kuroko, and more that they noticed his mother and father barraling towards the gaggle of graduatng students with an intensity so at ends with the image of the Kuroko family.
Teachers began to notice and, looking back, his team mates more that certainly saw him, used to his weak presence after all the time that had passed.
All that wasted time.
But why would they care? It wasn't like he was useful any more.
The last thing Kuroko saw before passing out would forever burned into his mind: Akashi Seijuro, his perfect face twisted into a beautiful mask of disgust, much like that of a Emperor's son reciving his first eyeful of the slums.
By the time Middle School had ended, less than a week later, Kuroko Tetsuya had been diagnosed with Coronary heart disease and told that without a new heart, it would take a miracle for him to survive the year.
He needed a new heart, desperately.
But a miracle worker he was not.
With no matching doners within range, the only thing Kuroko could do was wait in his drab hospital room for someone to kick the bucket and steal the cooling heart from their chest.
This only happened once, but the heart went to the doner's son insted, anothing victim of the violent attack that claimed his life.
Logically, Kuroko knew that the chances of reciving a heart in such a short period of time were slim and with time rapidly running out, hope was beging to fade.
Locked in that whitewashed room Kuroko had a lot of time to reflect on his meager fourteen years of life.
All he had done was bring misery to the numerious amounts of people, most off all his basketball team mates. In his selfishness, he'd robbed them of the joy of playing from them ans left the machines set on auto-win.
It was nearing school time when Kuroko had worked up the courage to ring Akashi to explain, and to apologise. For both ruining Basketball and for dieing.
Placing the phone next to his ear Kuroko felt the phone jingle, signifyiing an incoming call.
"Kuroko-kun. I'm your cousin Mayuzumi Chihiro. I have a proposition for you, regarding your health,"