Black Basketball: A false start

Chapter 278 Prelude to Revenge

"Drive faster, Nakamura!" On the highway the next day, Aida Yako looked at the endless stream of vehicles on the road with a nervous face, and kept urging Nakamura beside her, "You can even sleep through such an important race, what use do I have for you?"

"I'm sorry, Ms. Aida!" Nakamura drove the car attentively while staring at the road in front of him, and kept apologizing, "I spent too much time editing the video last night, and I accidentally overslept this morning..."

"Do you know how important today's game is?" Aida Yako roared, "After this game, Kaneki will go to the United States to develop! This may be his last game in Japan. No matter what, we have to grab the right to interview before the game!"

"Okay..." Nakamura gritted his teeth, his eyes revealing a look of nostalgia for the past, and said, "We will go down the viaduct in front later. I know there is a small road that can get to Kanagawa Gymnasium faster!"

"Why don't you drive faster!" Aida Yako roared with an unhappy look on her face.

"Well, after all these years, someone finally asks me to drive fast!" As Aida Yako finished her words, the originally slow van began to accelerate in a straight line, until it finally reached 180 miles per hour.

"Um..." Aida Yako looked at the car that was constantly retreating, fastened her seat belt nervously, swallowed her saliva, looked at Nakamura and asked, "Um... be careful!"

"Don't worry, Ms. Aida!" Nakamura said with a wild smile on his face, "For a civilian front-wheel drive car, you must control the strength of your left foot at the critical point of the clutch... Only in this way can you have better grip!"

"No, who are you? " Aida Yako looked at Nakamura No. 1 with a look of horror on her face, her whole body curled up into a ball.

"Sorry for the poor performance!" Nakamura turned his head and looked at Aida Yako, saying with a arrogant smile on his face.

"Buzz!"

As Nakamura stepped on the accelerator, the van, which was originally driving at a high speed, suddenly made a muffled sound, and then a burst of black smoke came out from the front hood of the car.

"Oh..." Nakamura looked at the stalled engine with embarrassment, scratched his cheek shyly, turned to look at Aida Yako and said, "Sorry, Ms. Aida, it seems we have to take a taxi to the gymnasium..."

"Nakamura..." After a moment of silence, Aida Yako suddenly smiled and turned to look at Nakamura.

"What...what happened?" Nakamura lowered his head with a guilty look on his face, not daring to look at Aida Yako's face.

"Go to hell!" Aida Yako clenched her left fist and hit Nakamura Nori's cheek hard.

……

"There are so many people..." At this time, at the entrance of Tokyo Gymnasium, Kazunari Takao looked at the people coming and going with a look of amazement and said, "Are there so many basketball fans in Tokyo?"

"Is it strange?" Midorima Shintaro glanced at Takao Kazunari and said, "Kaneki Ken rose to prominence in Tokyo with the Generation of Miracles. Now, the news that Kaneki Ken is going to the United States has spread throughout the Japanese basketball world. As Kaneki Ken's last performance in Japanese basketball, isn't it normal for so many people to come and watch the game?"

"You guy, don't talk as if Kaneki Ken is about to die..." Miyachi Kiyoshi said speechlessly.

"You can put all of this aside..." Midorima Shintaro pushed the frame of his glasses on his nose speechlessly, turned his head to look at Murasakibara Atsushi behind him and said, "You guy, it's okay for you to rub our team bus, but don't keep making those crunching noises when you eat!"

"Eh?" Murasakibara Atsushi looked up at Midorima Shintaro with a bewildered look on his face and said, "I'm not using your car, Midorima, I just got on the wrong car by accident..."

"Alas... I really can't do anything about you." Midorima Shintaro took off his glasses, pinched his brows with a headache and said, "I really can't get along with people like you..."

"Don't have a headache, Midorima~" Murasakihara Atsushi took out a rice bran roll from his pocket, handed it to Midorima Shintaro and said, "Here, eat this."

"This guy..." Midorima Shintaro looked at the rice bran roll handed over by Murasakibara Atsushi and took it after a moment of silence. "Don't eat it in the audience later. It will be very noisy."

"Hi~" Murasakibara Atsushi waved his hand nonchalantly and said, "But don't you think the streets look like rice bran rolls after the snow, Midori?"

"I don't understand what you are saying." Midorima Shintaro said speechlessly.

……

"Why do you have to come to watch Kaneki Ken's final?" Seto Kentaro complained to Kojiro Furuhashi beside him with an unhappy look on his face, "The weather is already so cold..."

"Oh, don't worry~" Kojiro Furuhashi said nonchalantly as he spit out a bubble of gum from his mouth, "When have you ever seen a captain miss a game with Kaneki Ken?"

"Really? The result of the match is already so clear, but we still have to wait and see. I don't know what the point of coming here is..." Seto Kentaro looked at Hanamiya Shin's back speechlessly and said, "Does Seirin High School still have a chance to defeat Kaneki Ken?"

"No, no, no~" Hanamiya Shin turned his head and looked at Seto Kentaro, with a wicked smile on his face, and said, "The two teams in this game are the only two players who have not been destroyed by my brutality... Isn't such a treasure worth savoring carefully?"

"..." Seto Kentaro looked at the crazy expression on Hanamiya Makoto's face speechlessly and said, "So you really enjoyed being beaten by Kaneki Ken, right, captain?"

"Hahahahaha, Hanamiya, I didn't expect you to be so good at this~" Just as Hanamiya Makoto walked towards the gym with a livid face, Hayama Kotaro's hearty laughter suddenly came from the side, "You are so shameless that your players can make fun of this kind of thing in front of you, Hanamiya~"

"There's no need for you to meddle in our team's affairs, Hayama." Hanamiya Shin said to Hayama Kotaro with an unhappy look on his face, "But you, Rakusan, lost to Kaneki in the summer and to Seirin in the winter. You kept losing until you had nothing left to lose. You really have no shame at all and still come to watch the game between the winners..."

"So, you are very brave, Hanamiya?" Akashi Seijuro asked Hanamiya Makoto with a slightly raised eyebrow.

"Tsk, why should I answer you?" Hanamiya Makoto, who was frightened by Akashi Seijuro's stare, snorted coldly and walked towards the gym without looking back.

"These guys deserve to be punished." Netani Takeyoshi said in a muffled voice, "If they had met me at the beginning, my hands would have been broken by them!!"

"Okay, don't waste your time on people like this anymore." Akashi Seijuro smiled and patted Takeyoshi Neya's shoulder and said, "Hurry up and go in, otherwise there won't be any seats left."

"Yes, Akashi." Kotaro Hayama nodded and followed Akashi Seijuro into the gym.

……

"It's really rare, Aomine." Wakamatsu Kosuke said with curiosity as he looked at the dark figure walking in front of him, "In the past, we wanted you to accompany us to watch a game and we had to give you a magazine. Today, I didn't use Mai-chan to seduce you, but you came here on your own initiative?"

"Is it weird? I'm here to watch my best friend's game. Isn't that normal?" Aomine Daiki asked with a somewhat unhappy look at Wakamatsu Kosuke.

"Of course it's normal to come to watch the game..." Wakamatsu Kosuke curled his lips with some disdain and said, "I just think it's too abnormal for a guy like you with a bad personality to have friends~"

"Tsk~" Aomine Daiki gave Wakamatsu Kosuke a disdainful look, sneered, and stopped talking. ...

“Crunch~~”

With the sound of brake pads, a taxi stopped steadily in front of the entrance of Tokyo Gymnasium.

"Thank you, Master." Nakamura took out all the money in his pocket and barely paid for the trip.

"Fortunately, fortunately..." Aida Yako looked at the empty parking lot in front of the gymnasium, patted her chest and said, "Fortunately, Kaneki-san hasn't arrived yet..."

"Ms. Aida, look over there~" Nakamura said, pointing sharply at the team bus approaching slowly in the distance.

"Go go go, faster, faster!" Looking at the Shonan High School team bus slowly stopping, Yako Aida started running.

"Wait for me, Ms. Aida!" Nakamura hurriedly picked up the camera in his hand and ran out breathlessly behind Aida Yako.

"Crack~~Swish~~"

As the team bus slowly stopped in front of the stadium, a huge army of media immediately rushed forward and surrounded the Shonan High School team bus like a zombie siege.

"How scary..." Sakuragi Hanamichi muttered as he looked at the flashing lights outside the window, "I don't know how Gilgamesh managed to hold on for so long in front of these reporters..."

"Squeak~"

As the door of the bus slowly opened, Kaneki Ken put on his sunglasses with ease and walked out of the bus with an expressionless face.

"Click, click~~" With the sound of flash lights, the open space in front of the gymnasium suddenly turned into a white ocean.

"Kaneki-san, please say a few words!"

"Kaneki-san, can you answer a few questions?"

"Kaneki-san..."

"Kaneki-san..."

When Kaneki Ken stopped, all the reporters seemed to be cats that had smelled salted fish, and frantically put the microphone to Kaneki Ken's mouth.

"Three questions." Kaneki Ken slowly put away his sunglasses, raised three fingers and said to the group of reporters in front of him.

"Excuse me, Kaneki-san!" Aida Miko, who had squeezed to the front of the team, raised her hand decisively and asked, "It is said that you will go to the United States to develop after this game. Is this true?"

"That's true." Kaneki Ken replied concisely, "I hope to bring my talent to the United States across the ocean...even to the NBA."

"Excuse me, Mr. Kaneki, what do you think of your opponent in this game?" a middle-aged male reporter asked impatiently.

"I have no opinion on people competing for second place." Kaneki Ken said with a subconscious curl of his lips.

"Mr. Kaneki, if you unfortunately lose this game, will you choose to stay in Japan to prove yourself, or go to the United States?" A young female reporter asked loudly not far away.

"First, I've always been lucky." Kaneki Ken stared at the female reporter who asked the question with burning eyes and said, "Second, I don't need to stay in Neon to prove anything."

"Okay, fellow journalists, we have finished asking three questions." Anton Mitsuyoshi looked at the media crowd who were still eager to get on the field and said, "The game will start soon, and we have to hurry up to warm up. We can ask more questions after the game is over."

After saying that, Mitsuyoshi Anton walked into the Tokyo Gymnasium with the players of Shonan High School without looking back.

"How arrogant..." Kagami Daiga, who had just gotten off the bus, looked at Kaneki Ken's arrogant back and said with emotion, "It seems that Shonan High School doesn't take us seriously at all!"

"Isn't this great?" Hinata Junpei said with a smile, "Being a dark horse is our Seirin's specialty!"

……

"There are so many people, brother..." In the audience seats on the sidelines, Akagi Haruko looked around in surprise and exclaimed to Akagi Takenori beside her, "I've never seen a game that can attract so many spectators~"

"This is perfectly normal." Akagi Takenori looked at Kaneki Ken's pictorial with a nostalgic look on his face and said, "After all... no one doesn't like to watch this kind of almost fateful duel."

"The finals of the Neon Country Winter Cup Basketball League will begin in two hours. Players from both teams please be ready to enter the court."

As the spectators were talking to each other, the broadcast above the stadium started on time. As the broadcast finished, the doors of the player tunnels on both sides of the stadium opened, and the players from Seirin High School and Shonan High School stepped onto the court, led by Junpei Hinata and Ken Kaneki respectively.

"Kaneki!", "Kaneki!", "Kaneki!"

"Vulcan!", "Vulcan!", "Vulcan!"

The moment the players from both teams stepped onto the field, the cheers and shouts from the audience became louder. Banners and flags were waving in the stands, and a tit-for-tat momentum contest had begun between the two fans sitting opposite each other.

"Long time no see, Hinata." Mitsui Shou took the lead and stepped forward, holding out his hand to Hinata Junpei and said, "Ichiro is in Seirin, thank you for your concern."

"No, it's thanks to Ichiro that we were able to successfully enter the finals." Hinata Junpei shook Mitsui's hand tightly and said, "You better be careful today, your junior brother may give you a surprise."

"Then I'll be waiting." Mitsui Hisashi glanced at Katsume Ichiro with a meaningful smile on his face.

"Kaneki..." Kagami Taiga had no one else in his eyes except Kaneki Ken at this moment. He took a deep breath, slowly walked behind Kaneki Ken who was doing shooting warm-up and said, "I have waited for this game for too long... I can finally take revenge on you!"

(End of this chapter)