Fanfic- English Lessons
Title- English Lessons
Fandom- Kuroko no Basket / Kuroko no Basuke
Rating- PG
Genre- gen, comedy
Warnings- UNBETAED CONTENT
Wordcount- 2100
Disclaimer- I do not own Kuroko no Basket
Summary- Aida asks Kagami to tutor the rest of the team when the school threatens to pull them from the team for poor grades in English class.
A/N- My first fic in this fandom! I hope I got the characters right.
“Kagami-kun!” Kagami launched a ball for the hoop and turned to the speaker, not having to watch to know that it had gone in. Aida Riko, coach of the Seirin high basketball team, stood by the bleachers watching him. “I have a request.”
This was interesting. “A request,” Kagami repeated warily.
“Yes! The rest of the team has been scoring poorly in their English classes. Since you went to middle school in America, you speak English, right? I want you to tutor them.”
Kagami frowned. “As if! Why should I waste my time helping them? Besides, grades aren’t important; we need to be thinking about the next game!” He started to turn and leave, but Aida spoke again.
“But if they score low on the next test, the school will forbid them from playing!” Kagami stopped. He could almost hear Aida’s smirk; she knew she had his attention. “Without them, there’s no way you could defeat the ‘Generation of Miracles’ on a team of only second-string players. Without Kuroko-kun,” she added, just to annoy him.
It was working. He didn’t want to waste his time with this, damn it, he’d rather be practicing, but the girl was right. He needed the rest of the team, and Kuroko, if he was going to fulfill his dream. Kagami seethed, but he had no choice.
“Alright! I’ll tutor them! But I won’t like it.” Aida smirked.
“Good. Just so you can get an idea what you’re up against, here are their last English tests.”
Kagami flipped through the papers. “Captain Hyuuga, not bad… Mitobe-senpai, terrible… Izuki-senpai, bad, but not that bad… Koganei-senpai, worse than Mitobe… Kuroko, that low?!” He stared at the paper in shock. Somehow, the near-invisible boy seemed to be surprisingly good at everything, to the point that it was surprising that he was actually bad.
“You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you,” Aida said.
“No way! I’ll just play with the second-string players! I can make up for it! There’s no way I can possibly turn these,” Kagami waved the tests under her nose, “into decent grades by the test on Friday!”
Aida glared at him, and Kagami fell silent. “If that’s the way you feel, then you’ll be doing five times the current practice routine every day for the rest of the year.”
“N-no way!” The training sessions were already gruelingly intense. Five times this much would probably kill him. “That’s blackmail,” Kagami argued weakly.
“Yup! But it’s worth it to keep this team together. We’ve got a better shot at winning than we’ve had in years. I’m not going to let some test scores blow that.”
Aida began to depart, but turned back. “I’ll wish you good luck, Kagami-kun. You’re going to need it.” Kagami groaned in frustration as she left.
The following day, after showering when practice was finished, the Seirin basketball team assembled in the cafeteria to study. It was generally understood that they would be staying late every night before the test. No one was looking forward to it, but it had to be done.
“Alright, everyone,” Captain Hyuuga said. “Let’s get to work.”
“Okay,” Kagami sighed. “Everyone, show me what English homework you have tonight, and I’ll try to help you out where you have problems.”
Cries for assistance began immediately. Kagami had to fight to impress order over the situation, but once everyone wasn’t shouting, it became clear that that the issues were too numerous. He ended up more or less doing the entire homework assignment himself on a dry-erase board usually used to plot court positions.
By the time everyone went home, they were all tired, hungry, and irritable. Even Kuroko, who never seemed to show any emotion, and Mitobe, who didn’t speak at all, seemed to exude an aura of aggravation. Kagami watched them all leave, dreading tomorrow’s session.
The next day after practice, the players congregated for a study session as before. Kagami had been putting more thought into this than he would have liked, and had come up with a strategy. Rather than just doing all of the work for them, or trying to deal with each separate problem at a time, he started first with one person, working through all of their issues on the dry-erase board so than anyone with the same problem would also be helped.
It took a lot of work. None of them were used to putting forth a lot of effort academically; they had all always focused their attention on sports. Kagami doubted here were many students in the class with worse grades in English.
By the time he’d ironed out only Mitobe’s problems, an hour had passed, and everyone was sick of working. Kagami knew that they wouldn’t want to get back to work right away, and that pushing them would only make them angry and less likely to listen. So he told them to take a break.
An impromptu three-on-three basketball game was quickly organized. The teams were Kuroko, Hyuuga, and Koganei against Izuki, Mitobe, and Kagami. They agreed only to play for fifteen minutes before returning to their studies.
The game was tougher than Kagami expected. He had superior dunking power, but when pressured, Hyuuga was also very good. Mitobe was excellent at defense, but Kuroko’s misdirection seemed to work well even with so few people on the court, and on people who knew what he was doing. Fourteen minutes in, they were tied, but Kuroko’s misdirection was beginning to wear off, and Kagami scored one last basket before their game ended.
The teammates stood on the court, some arguing and demanding a rematch, others laughing at them and joking with one another.
“What is going on here!?” All eyes turned to the door of the gym, where Aida stood glaring at them. “You guys need to study! If you think you’re not getting enough Basketball practice in, I’ll have you here during lunch and break too! You can’t play when you need to be working! Go! Go!”
Everyone quickly complied, for none of them wanted to spend their precious free time in more of Aida’s brutal practices. Another hour later, Kagami was packing up his books and preparing to go home.
“They’re doing better, it seems,” Aida’s voice said, making him jump.
“Don’t do that! You’re almost as bad as Kuroko.”
“Hey!” She glared at him, and then sighed. “Anyway, it looks like you’ve fixed Mitobe and Izuki’s problems, and some of Koganei’s along the way. What about Hyuuga and Kuroko?”
“I’m saving them for last,” Kagami replied. “Since Captain Hyuuga had the fewest problems and Kuroko-kun has the most, I’m hoping a lot of their questions will be answered by the time everyone else is done.”
“Good idea. Honestly, I don’t know what to do with that kid.”
“You mean Kuroko?”
“Yeah. I mean, he surprises you by being amazing, but when you start expecting it, suddenly he’s terrible. He’s always reading, but he’s not very smart.”
“But he mostly reads manga.”
“That’s true.” Aida groaned. “Just get them all in shape in the next two days, okay? Or you’ll be doing five times the practice every day.”
“Wait, I thought that was only if I didn’t help!”
“Nope! You’d better work hard, Kagami-kun!” Aida smirked at him, and Kagami groaned. That girl was so frustrating!
At the next study session, it took over an hour and a half to finish Koganei’s remaining problems. Everyone was aggravated by that point, particularly Mitobe and Izuki, who didn’t see a point in their being present now that their issues had been resolved. Whenever Izuki began to mention it, Kagami reminded him of what Aida would do to him if he didn’t show up, and he settled down and listened well.
Because they’d been forbidden from playing while they were supposed to be studying, Kagami had decided they should have some other sort of break. He certainly didn’t want to work straight through the entire session, arguing with people who didn’t want to learn, and having the whole team go home angry.
So he’d devised a perfectly reasonable excuse for taking a break: to eat dinner. Before coming to practice, Kagami had gone out to buy a bunch of cheap fast-food hamburgers. Everyone was more than glad to stop studying and eat, seeing as none of them had thought to bring anything, even though they were always complaining about hunger pains before they left for home.
Izuki held his hamburger before his eyes. “The ham burglar-”
“No!” Hyuuga snatched the wrapped sandwich from his hand. “None of your stupid puns!” Izuki whined and tried to take the hamburger back, despite there being a pile of them on the table. With the two of them arguing, Mitobe was eating silently while Koganei tried to make small talk with Kuroko, who was not exactly forthcoming with conversation.
Kagami noticed that Kuroko had only eaten half of his hamburger, while Kagami had bought enough for everyone to have two. “You, are you done with that?” Kagami asked, pointing to the half-eaten sandwich.
“Yes,” Kuroko replied.
“Are you sure? You really need to eat more, to be able to play sports like this.”
Kuroko blinked at him with large blue eyes and a vacant expression. “Are you worried about me, Kagami-kun?”
“As if! I just want everyone to be playing at top shape for our next match!”
“Well then, I’ll definitely be ready,” Kuroko promised evenly. Kagami rolled his eyes and crumpled the wrapper of his third hamburger -he’d eaten Kuroko’s second- and tossed it into the garbage can with an over-hand shot. He watched Hyuuga and Izuki, who had finally gotten his hamburger back, eating while glaring at each other. Mitobe and Koganei were already done.
“Are you going to finish that,” he asked Kuroko, pointing to the half-eaten hamburger. The younger teen stared at it momentarily before pushing it across the table to Kagami.
“I’m finished. You can have it.”
Kagami finished eating and, wanting to leave as soon as possibly, told Hyuuga and Izuki to eat while they studied, since they’d wasted their break arguing. Hyuuga’s few remaining questions were quickly answered though, and that just left Kuroko. But Kagami didn’t want to open that can of worms just yet, so he sent everyone home for the night.
The next day the whole team showed up to the study session, even though only Kuroko had problems still unresolved. Kagami was dreading what he’d have to deal with, considering how low Kuroko’s test scores had been. He was reluctant to leave the showers, and the last one to come to the cafeteria to study.
“Alright,” Kagami sighed, opening his English text book. “Tell me what it is you don’t understand.”
“In understand everything,” Kuroko replied evenly.
“Then,” Kagami blinked in surprise, “the other study sessions answered all of your questions?”
“A few. I didn’t have very many.”
“How can you not have many questions with a score like this?” Kagami held up Kuroko’s test for the entire team to see, and gasps flew around the table.
“I understood everything,” Kuroko said. “But during the test, I was… thinking, about Basketball.”
“You were… thinking about Basketball,” Kagami repeated, in a mix of shock and exasperation. “That’s why you got such a bad score?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’d better not be distracted on your next test, or you won’t be playing Basketball at all!” Kagami shouted in the other teen’s face, though Kuroko was not fazed in the least.
“So,” Koganei said. “Since there’s nothing more to do today, how about a rematch of last time?”
Everyone agreed enthusiastically, and they began to play, only to be found and chased away by Aida, who insisted that they all needed a good night’s sleep before the test tomorrow.
“Kagami-kun!” Kagami sighed and threw the ball at the basket. He didn’t want to hear anything Aida had to say, not after the last time.
“What is it?” he grumbled.
“I just thought you’d like to see everybody’s test scores, make sure you’re not doing five times the practice.” Aida smiled in a way that was probably meant to look innocent, but Kagami thought she looked like a demon.
“Alright, show me!” He held out a hand and she slapped the papers into it. “Captain Hyuuga did well, as expected. Mitobe-senpai and Izuki-senpai both improved a lot. Koganei scored lower than them, but he passed, so that’s all that matters. And Kuroko…” his voice trailed off.
Aida looked over his shoulder at the paper and gasped. “A-a perfect score…”
“I guess he wasn’t kidding about being distracted by thoughts of Basketball.”
“That guy…” Aida brushed her hair back with one hand and sighed. “It’s good to think about it, but not so much that it endangers his chances to play it! What am I going to do with him?”