There was no hesitation.
No pump fake.
Facing Maki's defense head-on, Sendoh forcefully arched his back in midair.
His core muscles exploded with power.
With sheer strength, he forced the ball underneath Maki Shinichi's armpit.
Then...
He swung his arm in a full arc.
A tomahawk slam!
"Nani?!"
Maki's eyes widened.
By the time he tried to pull his hand back...
It was already too late.
BOOM!!!
The arena shook.
The rim screamed in agony.
Sendoh Akira...
Had thrown down a thunderous dunk right over Maki!
The basketball crashed violently through the net, the white nylon exploding like a tidal wave that threatened to engulf the entire gymnasium.
The red light came on.
BEEEEEP!!!
The final buzzer?
No.
The end of regulation.
82:82.
Tie game!
"ROAAAAAR!!"
As soon as he landed, Sendoh threw his head back and let out a deafening roar, releasing every ounce of frustration he had carried.
At that moment...
He wasn't a laid-back fisherman.
He was the king of Ryonan.
The entire arena erupted.
"He made it!! A buzzer-beating dunk!!"
"Holy crap!! That was insane! Is this really Sendoh?!"
Uozumi Jun cried like an oversized child.
"Coach!! We still have a chance!!"
Maki landed as well.
Watching the No. 7 jersey disappear beneath a sea of celebrating teammates...
His chest rose and fell violently.
His expression was incredibly complicated.
Anger.
Frustration.
And...
A faint trace of fear.
"...He didn't pass?"
Maki wiped away the sweat on his forehead.
Instead of looking irritated, however...
A savage grin slowly spread across his face.
"Good."
"Very good."
"Sendoh Akira..."
"You've finally become a true ace."
The arena announcer's voice echoed throughout the stadium.
"The score is tied!"
"There will be a two-minute break before overtime begins!"
The battle between monsters...
Had only just begun.
Yet...
The section of the stands that had belonged to Shohoku was now completely empty.
Only a few half-finished bottles of water remained, silently bearing witness to the hurried departure of those teenagers.
The real battle...
Had split into two battlefields.
One—
The life-or-death struggle of overtime on the basketball court.
The other...
A desperate race against death at the hospital.
...
Amid the deafening cheers...
One corner of the press section was strangely quiet.
Nakamura's pen remained suspended in midair.
His eyes were as wide as saucers.
His mind was still replaying the lightning-fast sequence from moments ago.
"...Miss Aida."
He swallowed nervously.
His voice sounded unsteady.
"Did... did Maki just hold back?"
As a reporter, Nakamura wasn't much of a basketball player.
But he had a keen eye.
Maki's chase-down defense just now had been almost instantaneous.
His leap had been so overwhelming it practically blotted out the sky.
With "Emperor Maki's" absurd physical abilities...
That should have been a monstrous volleyball-style spike that sent the ball into orbit.
But instead...
Sendoh dunked it anyway.
Aida Yayoi remained silent.
She folded her arms across her chest.
Her eyes stayed locked on Maki, who was sitting courtside, breathing heavily.
The shock in her gaze gradually transformed into something else.
Lingering fear.
"...You noticed it too?"
She took a slow breath, her voice taut.
"Most people only saw a defensive mistake."
"But think back carefully to the replay."
She raised one finger...
Leaving only an almost invisible gap.
"At the very last instant, while they were battling in midair..."
"Maki..."
"Pulled his hand back."
"He... pulled back?!"
"But why?!"
"That was the game-saving block!"
"If he blocked it, Kainan would've won!"
Nakamura nearly jumped out of his seat.
"Because..."
"It was a trap."
Aida's expression was so serious it seemed water could drip from it.
"Didn't something feel strange?"
"With Sendoh's speed..."
"Didn't Maki catch up to that fast break a little too easily?"
"You mean..."
Cold sweat instantly ran down Nakamura's back.
"He was fishing."
Aida adjusted her glasses.
A cold glint flashed across the lenses.
"Sendoh deliberately slowed down."
"He intentionally exposed the ball inside Maki's blocking range."
"He even initiated contact in midair."
"He was baiting Maki into committing."
In the back rows of the audience...
Another person had also seen through the layers of psychological warfare.
Fujima Kenji.
His gaze passed through the crowd and settled on Sendoh, who was sitting on the bench with a towel draped over his head.
The man whose breathing still trembled with exhaustion.
To Fujima...
He looked like an absolute madman.
Sendoh...
What the hell is going on inside your head?
He cursed inwardly.
But the horror in his eyes couldn't be concealed.
Down by two.
Four seconds left.
Cornered like that...
And he deliberately let Maki catch him.
The surrounding fans were still wildly celebrating the game-tying basket.
Only those who truly understood basketball...
Realized just how terrifying the calculations inside those two minds had been during that single second.
That wasn't a fast break.
It was an all-in gamble...
With their basketball careers as the stakes.
"One minute remaining."
The scorer's table announcement rang out like a bucket of cold water, snapping everyone back to reality.
Fujima looked toward the scoreboard.
82:82.
"If Maki hadn't pulled back..."
"If he'd instinctively gone all out for the block..."
Fujima closed his eyes.
In an instant...
Another ending played out inside his mind.
The whistle.
The basket.
And one free throw.
"He was gambling..."
Fujima's eyes shot open.
His scalp tingled.
"He was betting Maki would foul him."
"A made basket plus the free throw..."
"That would've made it 83:82."
"...That..."
"Was the script Sendoh wrote in that single second."
"A script..."
"For a game-winning finish.
Sendoh knew better than anyone.
Ryonan had already exhausted every resource.
Uozumi had been ejected.
Fukuda excelled on offense but remained a defensive liability.
As for Sendoh himself...
The backlash from entering the Zone was consuming the last remnants of his stamina.
He didn't want overtime.
More accurately...
He knew Ryonan couldn't survive overtime.
So in the final four seconds of regulation...
He disguised a seemingly reckless power dunk...
To bait Maki into fouling him...
And end the game immediately with a three-point play.
What unbelievable confidence.
What unimaginable madness.
On the opposite side of the court...
Inside Kainan's huddle...
Coach Takato was enthusiastically drawing up overtime strategies.
But Maki Shinichi didn't seem to hear a single word.
Tilting his head back, he emptied a bottle of water.
The icy liquid flowed down his throat.
Yet it couldn't extinguish the fire burning inside his chest.
The sensation from that final play...
Still lingered at his fingertips.
If his hand had reached just one centimeter farther...
If his wrist had pressed down just a little more...
That dunk would've been stuffed without question.
But at the same time...
The referee's whistle would have blown.
As a battle-hardened king...
At that instant in midair...
Maki had smelled the trap.
His beast-like instincts had saved him.
He forcibly held back.
Sendoh scored...
But Maki also avoided the foul.
Avoided being killed by a game-winning three-point play.
Setting down the water bottle...
Maki's gaze became as sharp as a blade, piercing straight toward the Ryonan bench.
The figure beneath the towel was trembling slightly...
Clearly using every precious second to recover.
This guy...
He really dared to gamble.
For the first time...
An unfamiliar emotion welled up inside Maki.
Not anger.
But the exhilaration...
Of finally meeting an equal opponent.
Even...
A hint of excitement.
To wager the fate of an entire team...
On a single foul call...
At the deciding moment of the game...
If it were me...
I might have done the exact same thing.
At that moment...
Maki quietly raised Sendoh's threat level to the highest possible rank.
Before...
He had viewed Sendoh as nothing more than a talented junior.
But now...
He acknowledged him.
Behind that perpetually sleepy expression...
Flowed the same blood as his own.
The blood of an apex predator.
Ruthless.
Greedy.
And willing to do anything...
To win.
BEEEEEP!!
The shrill whistle tore apart the silence before the coming storm.
"Overtime begins!"
"Both teams, please return to the court!"
END OF CHAPTER
The King Of Slacking Off - MrBehringer's Secret
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