A/N: Argh, I was doing such a good job of being inactive on this site, and then I had to go and blow it. Now I'll have to wait two whole years before my name leaves the front page and I fade back into legend. I spent like 30 mins on this fic, and while I won't go so far as to call it a masterpiece, I was rather tickled writing it.


Pandemic Year

"Some year."

"No kidding."

"I'm glad they're letting us back into bars again."

"Would you believe it if I told you I didn't used to drink before the pandemic?"

"You don't say?"

"Six months into quarantine, I decided I'd have to start drinking or I'd find my mug plastered all over the evening news for killing my wife and children."

"When you put it that way, this was the only healthy choice."

"But hey, if it hadn't been for the pandemic, I might never have entered a bar in my life, and that means I'd never have run into you."

"Pandemic or not, I've always been a regular here."

"I can tell. Oh, no! Not because of that. If we're talking about bellies, I've got more than my fair share. And I've only been a drinker for six months."

"You've got a long way to go, my friend."

"So you've been living here this whole time?"

"This whole time."

"How come I've never run into you before?"

"No global pandemic, I suppose."

"This is weird."

"It is that, if anything."

"I wouldn't even have recognized you if the bartender hadn't called you by your name. And even then I thought, No, it couldn't possibly be—!"

"And if I'm being honest, I thought you were just some garrulous stranger when we first started talking. Not that I would have minded when I've already had so much to drink. But something about you disturbed some old box of memories tucked away in a corner of my mind."

"Couldn't have been my beautiful face, could it?"

"Now that I know you're no stranger, I feel free to tell you that, if your face had been anything like what it is now, I'd prefer to keep that box of memories sealed shut, thank you very much."

"Hey, it's not like you've aged any better."

"I wish I could tell you my gleaming dome was merely shaved."

"It's nice. In a way, it suits you. Makes you look distinguished."

"It doesn't really."

"No, it doesn't."

"At least you've got a full head of hair."

"Seems like I have more gray hairs by the day."

"At least you can dye the gray ones."

"My wife said something very wise to me a couple years ago when she was trying to convince me to start going to the gym. She said a young man's head of hair looks incongruous atop this flabby old body. I agreed. So the hair dye had to go."

"And your wife, I assume she didn't marry you for your looks?"

"She did. And I married her for hers. But we've both lost what once drew us to each other, and the only thing keeping us together now is a tacit acknowledgement of the fact that neither of us would have the moral high ground in admitting it."

"And the children, of course."

"What about the children?"

"They are also keeping you together."

"I would hardly call them 'children'."

"How old are they?"

"14 and 10."

"Dim like their father?"

"Quite the opposite. Those insufferable brats think they know everything. And the sad thing is, they do. I don't know who they get it from."

"Probably a grandparent."

"What about you? Any family?"

"No. Well, I had a wife, but we couldn't make it work."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Don't be. It was a mutual decision."

"Still, must have been hard."

"It wasn't easy, to be sure. But thinking back to how hard we tried to find that spark that we'd lost— It's a relief, honestly."

"No children?"

"No children, thankfully. Probably the only reason we were able to make a clean break of it. And now we're both happy. Well, she probably is, anyway. I have no idea where she is these days. I am, of course, counting out my days one 3 AM Uber ride home at a time."

"It's funny, isn't it? When you're in high school, you think the world is at your feet. And then you realize that wasn't really the world at all. In the real world, you're just a stooge."

"Or a drunkard. Or bald."

"Or fat."

"Or lactose intolerant."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Don't be. I'd be more concerned if I was alcohol intolerant."

"Everyone is, actually. No amount of alcohol is good for you."

"Yet you don't see people flocking to dairy bars, do you?"

"Are there dairy bars?"

"No, and that's my point."

"I think you're onto something."

"And even if there were dairy bars, I'm lactose intolerant, so I have no business setting foot in one."

"A wise decision. So as I was saying, it's funny, isn't it? You're just a bald lactose-intolerant fat drunken fuck."

"Hey!"

"Generic 'you', not you. Or would you rather I used 'one'? In the real world, one is just a bald lactose-intolerant fat fuck, and one realizes that some nobody that one used to look down on in high school is the real hero of the manga."

"Does this 'nobody' have a name?"

"Speaking generally, of course."

"I've seen one or two of your old classmates over the years. That Sakuragi. Red hair?"

"Yeah, I remember him."

"He's definitely a hero now."

"I was hoping you wouldn't bring him up."

"It was you, my friend, who jogged my memory. Otherwise I would never have remembered that he existed. He's got it all now. Fucker looks like he's in his twenties. Flat stomach. Pretty wife. Successful career. It's almost like what you were like in high school is a poor predictor of what you will go on to be later in life."

"You mean 'one', of course? 'What one was like in high school…'?"

"Yes, that's what I meant."

"Yes, Sakuragi was one of those nobodies we used to look down on."

"By 'we' you mean 'one', of course?"

"No, I mean 'we' specifically this time."

"I don't recall looking down on him. I didn't even really see him outside of basketball games."

"You did. We all did. It was part of his formative tribulations."

"His character development, you mean?"

"Exactly. To think we were all just side characters in his triumphal story arc."

"More like stepping stones."

"That cuts deep."

"At least no one pretends we ever had the potential to make it very far after high school."

"I agree, it would sting so much worse if I wasn't this fat ugly middle-aged fuck with a dull salaryman job and a mind-numbingly average home life."

"Do you think Sakuragi remembers us?"

"Doubtful. We are a closed chapter in his life."

"A closed chapter. I like that. Poignant and terminal."

"Yes, certainly merits a drink, that one."

"Drink away the pain and the disappointment."

"Here at the quiet limit of the world where the side characters languish till they die."

"If you look at the table behind us, they are all there."

"So many faces, none of them familiar."

"Yet you know them, like you know your own sisters and brothers."

"My family."

"Our family."

end.


A/N: I haven't given enough information for you to be able to piece together who the speakers are, which means they could be anybody, but they are Sendoh and Rukawa. I'll let you decide which is which.

I was feeling nostalgic this evening and decided to watch a Slam Dunk AMV on YouTube, when I thought, in my stories I usually write about these characters as if they're living in the present, but Slam Dunk was published between 1990 and 1993 (the year I was born). That means these characters must be 50 now. Their youths faded. Their best years behind them. Their first crushes were people dressed in 90s outfits. So many of them would have peaked in high school. It's fucking sad.