Elephant in the Room
"You've been doing a terrific job." Youta's hard work had not gone unnoticed as he received praise from his teacher. "Fuwaka's has been putting in much more effort lately. While I do wish her scores would've improved a bit more. She's certainly on the right track thanks to you. So we can consider that little mission of yours accomplished."
"Great." He breathed a sigh of relief over passing his first job. While Youta would never consider what he had to do little, it certainly was rewarding. However if Mikimasa felt this was considering on the lighter side, then it meant there would be more difficult challenges in the future. "So I'm good for now? Can I just go hand out water bottles?"
"I already have a new mission lined up for you." The boy sighed upon realizing this new club would now take away any semblance of free time he would have for the rest of high school. "While I would like to inform you that you're not done with Fuwaka, as she still needs to continue to makes strides in her studies. There is another person in need of your services. This time, she was the one to make this request."
"Really?" For a moment, Youta's eyes lit up as he believed this was simply Mitora doing it so that they'd be able to spend more time together.
"She's a basketball player." The second he heard those words leave his teachers mouth, Youta felt indescribable disappointment. "Her name's Takame Yoshinaga. A first year student who recently joined the basketball team. From the way she worded her own problem. It seems she wants someone to help her get better at her chosen sport."
"Isn't that the job of a coach?" He asked, knowing full well that he didn't have the slightest clue on how basketball worked.
"True, but the coach does have their hands full teaching every member of the team. Maybe she just felt she had been neglected. So a bit of a side mission for you is to help her speak up to get the training she wants. I'll also have a chat with the coach to see what's going on. A bit odd for them to not mention anything to me about this, seeing as I've sent an email to everyone." Mikimasa wrote down on a piece of paper to remind himself of his own responsibilities.
"I'll handle what I can." Obviously it wasn't as if Youta could decline the mission. So he took it without much thought. The boy looked over at Fuwaka, who served as the shining example that he had what it took.
After school had ended, the boy took the most direct path to the school's gym. Which was where the basketball teams practiced every day. Unlike with his first mission, Youta wasn't given the luxury of seeing who he'd be helping. So he had to approach some of the players and asked where Takame happened to be.
"I haven't seen her yet." Was the answer he got after asking every person taking warm up shots. Since it appeared she was running late, there was nothing else for him to do other than to sit in the stands and wait while he watched. As he sat back, bored out of his mind waiting, Youta wondered what was taking that girl so long to arrive. Practice seemed to be begin for both teams, so he thought it was no wonder why she felt herself needing help training if she couldn't make the effort to actually be at practice.
"Um, who are you?" As he sat staring over at the girl's basketball team to see when this girl would show up. One of them apparently came up to him and asked this question.
"I'm…" The first thing he thought upon turning to see her was just how tall this girl was. Even though he was sitting, she clearly towered over him and was much bigger than the rest of her team. Somehow he didn't recall seeing her when asking for Takame, nor did he notice her arriving some time later.
"Oh, did I do something wrong?" She noticed him staring and immediately took a step back as she turned her head down and to the side to avoid his gaze.
"Sorry, that was rude of me." He stood up to plead his case. "I'm not trying to do anything weird. I'm Youta Morikawa, the school's sports manager. I was looking for a Takame Yoshinaga because she's in need of my services?"
"That's me." She raised her hand and meekly smiled in revealing her identity. "I'm Takame Yoshinaga."
"Oh good." He said, finally prepared to get started on his job. "You know, if you want to get better. It's a good thing to show up on time."
"But I did?" She replied, giving him a bewildered face. "I saw you talking to everyone, but then you just went to sit down. So I just thought you were just some scout or something."
"What? But I'm pretty sure I talked to everyone." He went to a lot of people, so Youta was confident he didn't miss anyone he saw. Not to mention that at this girl's size, she should be hard to miss. "You know, lying's not going to help you either."
"But I'm not…" She gave off a despondent aura in response to his scolding. The type of response one would expect from someone who was indeed telling the truth, but couldn't convince the one giving them a hard time this fact. There was no indicator to him that this was an act, so it led him to believe her.
"Okay sorry." He said. "I guess I must've missed you somehow." Though this made less sense as all her teammates had mentioned not seeing her either. But unless there was some strange prank being pulled, there was no way they'd all lie either. "So what's the things you'd say is your problem? I wasn't given much details, but it must be pretty serious if you felt you needed to reach out.
"The truth is… I'm really bad at basketball." She admitted. "I only just started playing since I got into high school, which was back at the start of the school year."
"That's it?" The part which made this unbelievable to him wasn't her apparent lack of skills. Everyone was a beginner at some point.
However, her massive size despite only having been a high schooler for a month shocked him more. "It looks like you really hit that growth spurt very early on." He murmured to himself in comment on her age. "How come you haven't talked to your couch about it? Or maybe I should ask if that's really a problem. I mean, if you're new then of course you'll struggle. But you'll get better in time because that's just how it works."
"I don't feel like I've made any improvements at all since I joined." She frown, the depressing aura surrounding her permeated to a point where it began to affect him too. "And coach is super kind, but it feels like when I'm practicing. She just ends up working with everyone else first."
"It does suck to get picked last, doesn't it?" Youta suffered from numerous flashbacks during his elementary and junior high days where every single time teams were picked. The team captains always picked him last. Which would be more accurate to say they didn't chose him and he only got put on whoever was unlucky enough to have him. "But it has to happen to someone. So maybe coach just thinks you're decent enough as is." This was a tall girl and he had head tall people were better at basketball. So maybe she had been overreacting.
Considering his prior experience, it seemed the coaches were fine with him taking away one of their players to do his job. So he led her to one of the unused hoops and grabbed a basketball to have her showcase some of her skills. "I'll be completely honest. I'm not what you call an expert on your sport, but I do have some knowledge in your basics. Can you show me how you dribble and shoot the ball?"
"Okay…" She said as he passed it to her. Takame carefully looked down at the ground and bounced the ball once before holding it in her hands again.
"Um, I'm pretty sure dribbling means more than one bounce." He was underwhelmed by her act and even wondered for a moment on if he was being tricked by her.
"Yeah…" She again went to dribble the ball. Slowly she bounced it once, then twice, then on the third bounce it ended up hitting her foot and bouncing wildly away from her. "Oh no! I'm so sorry." Said Takame as she awkwardly chased it down, her huge size made it a challenge to keep up while she bent over to try and grab it as the ball rolled away all the way off court, only stopping once it hit the wall.
"No problem, that's just a skill we need to work on." He said, remaining patient. "How about you show me how you shoot the ball? That's a big part of the game, I hear."
"Got it." She said, running back with the ball in her hands. While Youta didn't know how the proper shooting form worked. From his occasional times of seeing people shoot a basketball, he noted the manner in which they did it. Takame would not imitate this in the slightest as she took the ball over her head and threw it at the basket in a manner more akin to soccer players throwing the ball.
Unsurprisingly her shot missed. Instead of going through the hoop, it hit the rim directly and ricocheted back quickly, hitting Youta right in the face and knocking the boy onto the ground. "Are you okay!?" She rushed over and towered even greater to him as he laid on the ground.
"This is going to harder than I thought." He grumbled to himself.