Kagami looks up, and then, hurriedl

Kagami looks up, and then, hurriedly, up again, and experiences a moment of dizzying vertigo; he's never seen a girl so tall, taller than him, hand reaching for Kuroko like a normal person reaches for a doll. Her hair falls over the new girl's expression, but Kuroko is actually getting irritated and Kagami thinks again and again with that damn team.

Himuro watches tolerantly. Murasakibara talks about her former teammates, but never as her former teammates, all about how Kise-chin is so so pretty but too pushy it's annoying and Midorima is weird but fun to tease and Mine-chin and Kuro-chin are inseparable and everyone is nice about finding her nice snacks and Aka-chin is always to be listened to. It's like pulling teeth to even get her to say something about how Aomine played boys out of boredom and the rest of them fell in love or line with basketball, like magnetism, like water running across rock, and then scattered to their different schools, like moving into formation.

It's only on the court, caught up in the game she hates, that Murasakibara even starts to seem a part of something even bigger than she is, diminished and dissatisfied, but still overwhelming. She takes players apart in the game, and tells them about how she hates them, and sees the truth written in their eyes: here's someone who's been born better at their sport than they will ever be. Why don't they just give up now? Even as a girl, she's just been blessed like this.

She hates them, she says. It's sickening, she says. But when she turns her head in response to Taiga's taunt, Himuro thinks monster, along with everyone else there, and wonders how she can say, really, how she can say it, that she hates basketball after all.