At that moment, time seemed to stretch on infinitely.
The basketball left his hand, tracing a high, graceful, nearly perfect parabola through the air.
Everyone's eyes were firmly drawn to that arc, rising and falling along with it.
Hisashi Mitsui held his shooting form, utterly motionless.
His mind was blank. Every sound in the world had vanished, leaving only the violent pounding of his own heartbeat in his ears.
I shot it...
I actually... really shot it...
An indescribable tangle of regret, excitement, bitterness, and wild joy surged over him like floodwaters bursting through a dam.
He did not even dare look at the result.
He was afraid.
Afraid that two wasted years had made his body sluggish and his touch rusty.
Afraid that this ball, carrying all his resentment and pride, would clang off the rim and be mercilessly bounced away.
That would be the cruelest judgment upon him, a "former genius."
Yet the clank he had imagined never came.
Instead, there was a...
Swish!
Clear and pleasant, like heavenly music!
Nothing but net!
The basketball did not even graze the rim. It dropped cleanly and straight into the net!
"..."
The entire gym fell into a deathly silence.
You could hear a pin drop.
Tetsuo and the other delinquents stood there dumbfounded, their mouths hanging open wide enough to fit an egg.
They... what had they just seen?
Mitsui, who usually smoked, fought, and wallowed in decay with them like a dead dog, had actually... made such a beautiful shot?
Was that really the same person?!
The Shohoku Players were even more stunned beyond words.
"It... it went in?" Hanamichi Sakuragi rubbed his eyes, his face full of disbelief.
Though he did not understand shooting form or parabolas, he could tell that shot had looked better than any