We Are Alight

(Written for the Basketball Poet Society, Challenge 51: The Art of War.) If there's a phantom on Rakuzan's basketball team, Mayuzumi thinks, it's not him. It's Akashi Seijuurou.

Here’s the thing: Mayuzumi knows that rationally, people aren’t flat characters like those that exist in books. It is strictly impossible that Akashi is calm and collected for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There must be something that gets his heart beating fast, that makes a feeling of dread sink in his stomach, that makes him feel like screaming or crying or cursing the world. And if anything vaguely resembling justice actually exists, then the cosmic balancing act of the universe should guarantee that for every perfect 100 Akashi gets on a test or love confession tucked into his shoe cubby or basketball game led to victory, he’s at least had to suffer something in return.