Takao wonders briefly what the heck heâs even doing. Playing basketball by himself? Heâs itching to play with someone, but this is kind of patheticâŠ
He sighs and bends down to pick up the ball, holding it up to his face and inspecting it. Did someone leave it at the street court by mistake? It doesnât have a name or anything written on it, so itâd be hard to find another owner if there really was one.
Another sigh. âPlaying basketball alone is so much less funâŠâ
Once more is the ball in the playerâs hold! Â
Instantly things are quiet, and the lonely and solemn atmosphere of the place is highlighted.Â
The air is almost heavy now in the silence.Â
This isnât how basketball should be.
Basketball is fast paced! High energy! Excitement all around as the teams fight to the death fiercely compete with each other by throwing a decently sized orange ball around.Â
The player had the ball in his hands.Â
Go on! Fight! Fight with all your might against the invisible rival team! Theyâre going to steal the ball away from you and win if you donât!Â
If only a ball were able to convey such things.Â
When players stopped and things got quiet like this - those were usually the times when the ball would get tossed away and forgotten, never touched again until some random person found it. It had traveled quite a ways like that. Picked up, dribbled around for a while, and then discarded. No one ever kept the ball, for whatever reason.Â
Some days it was rolling through grassy fields, blown along by strong winds. Some days it was bouncing fiercely down the street after being thrown or kicked by a passerby. Those were days when it would usually wind up in traffic, bouncing off cars as it continued on itâs way - much to the surprise of the drivers- and barely avoiding being crushed. Amazing that it didnât seem to lose any air through adventures like that.
More often though, it was just left sitting around town, until the next event that set it into motion once again.Â
A passerby had tossed it into the street court days ago, and thatâs where it stayed, alone and in a corner. Other players that had come around had brought their own balls, and didnât even notice the stray. Not even with how excitedly animated it seemed when blown about by the wind. Such a clear invitation, ignored over and over again.Â
Takao had been the first person to take notice of the ball in a long time. Well, depending on what that indeterminate number of days was. But that isnât something a basketball can tell, so it had probably been a long time.Â
And Takao had played the game with the ball. The very thing that the ball was made for. The thing that gave the ball a purpose that wasnât just to sit and slowly deflate somewhere. Takao mightâve been the first person to actually care that the ball was around.Â
And now, the silence was very telling of what was probably going to happen next.
The ball would be abandoned once again.Â
Were it a person capable of thought and emotion, it probably would have been feeling resigned to that inevitability.Â
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