Kanagawa Prefecture, Shohoku High School Basketball Gym.
The freshman scrimmage had reached its peak when everything went wrong.
CRACK.
Not a sound—a feeling.
The kind of situation that stops time.
Mitsui Hisashi hit the floor hard, his left knee twisted at an angle that made Kogure’s stomach drop.
The ball bounced away, forgotten.
The gym went silent except for Mitsui’s sharp intake of breath.
“Mitsui!”
“Someone get help!”
Teammates swarmed around him.
Mitsui’s face had gone white, his hands clutching his knee.
Sweat dripped from his jaw onto the hardwood.
Kogure stood frozen at half-court, watching the scene unfold like he was outside his own body.
This wasn’t supposed to—
The thought fractured.
Memories crashed through him like a tsunami, not his memories, but they were his.
Another life.
Another world.
One where this life was manga panels and anime episodes called Slam Dunk, where he’d watched this exact injury happen on a screen, where Mitsui’s tragedy had been entertainment.
I transmigrated.
The realization hit harder than it should have.
He’d read enough web novels to know the tropes, but standing in Shohoku’s gym with sweat-soaked hardwood under his sneakers and Mitsui gasping on the ground made it viscerally, impossibly real.
Of all the bodies to wake up in—Kogure Kiminobu.
The eternal benchwarmer.
Three years of training in middle school, and he’d never cracked the starting five.
Hell, even Miyagi Ryota would’ve been better, and that guy was barely 168cm tall.
But if the memories flooding his mind were right, if the timeline matched up, then Mitsui was about to make the worst decision of his basketball career.
Which means I can actually change something.
The chaos snapped back into focus.
Akagi Takenori crouched beside Mitsui, his gorilla-like frame tense with guilt.
The freshman center had blocked Mitsui’s shot the previous possession—a thunderous rejection that had lit a fire under the MVP’s pride.
Mitsui had come back harder, changing direction too fast, pushing his body past its limits.
“Kogure!”
Captain Ikeda’s voice cut through the noise.
The third-year’s face was ashen.
This was his last year, and Shohoku’s only hope had just crumpled to the floor.
“Why are you standing there?
Call an ambulance!”
Kogure’s legs moved before his brain caught up.
He sprinted for the pay phone outside the gym—no cell phones in 1992, that’d take getting used to—and dialed emergency services with shaking fingers.
Ten minutes later, paramedics loaded Mitsui onto a stretcher.
The freshman looked smaller somehow, vulnerable in a way that the junior high MVP never should.
As the ambulance pulled away, sirens fading into Kanagawa’s afternoon traffic, the weight of what just happened settled over the team.
Several freshmen were already whispering about quitting.
A shadow fell across Kogure.
He looked up—and up—at Akagi’s troubled face.
“I wonder if Mitsui’s okay.” The big man’s voice was quiet, heavy with guilt.
“It’s not your fault, Akagi.” Kogure adjusted his glasses—a habit that would apparently die hard.
“After practice, I’m going to visit him at the hospital.
Want to come?”
Akagi nodded without hesitation.
Practice was a disaster.
The team went through the motions, but the energy had drained from the gym.
Passes went wide.
Shots clanged off the rim.
Coach Anzai watched from his chair with that inscrutable expression, saying nothing.
Kogure ran through drills on autopilot while his mind raced through the timeline.
In the original story, Mitsui’s first injury was just the beginning.
The real catastrophe came when he ignored medical advice and returned too early, worsening the damage.
Two years lost to injury and delinquency.
Two years that stripped away his conditioning, his skills, his confidence.
The “Coach, I want to play basketball” scene was iconic, but the tragedy leading up to it?
That could be prevented.
Had to be prevented.
Not just for Mitsui’s sake, though that mattered.
When Mitsui quit the team after his second injury, half the freshman class followed him out the door.
Three players from Takeishi Junior High alone, guys who’d played in nationals, gone because their star had fallen.
Shohoku couldn’t afford to lose that depth.
Not if they wanted to be more than first-round fodder.
As soon as Coach Anzai dismissed them, Kogure and Akagi headed straight for Kanagawa General Hospital.
The private room was spacious—Mitsui’s family clearly had money.
The freshman sat propped up in bed, leafing through a basketball magazine with forced casualness.
His left knee, elevated on a pillow, wasn’t in a cast.
That was good.
Maybe.
Kogure knocked on the open door.
“Mitsui.”
The shooting guard looked up, surprised.
“Kogure?
Akagi?
What are you guys doing here?”
“Visiting you on behalf of the team.” Kogure set a bag of fruit on the bedside table.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Just a minor injury.” Mitsui waved dismissively, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“I’ll be out of here in no time.”
“The doctor said your knee ligament is slightly damaged.” Kogure kept his voice level, clinical.
“One month of rest.
No strenuous activity.”
“A month?” Mitsui sat up straighter, wincing as his knee shifted.
“That’s too long!
The prefectural tournament is in less than a month.
The team needs me—”
“The team needs you healthy.”
“You don’t understand.” Mitsui’s hands clenched the magazine tight enough to crumple pages.
“If I’m not there, we’ll lose.
I have to get back as soon as possible.
I have to prove to Coach Anzai that—”
“Mitsui.” Kogure’s tone sharpened.
“You don’t want Coach Anzai to find out you returned to the team injured, do you?”
That stopped him cold.
Mitsui’s face went pale.
“You wouldn’t—”
“I won’t have to tell him if you follow doctor’s orders.” Kogure pulled up a chair, leaning forward.
“Let me tell you a story.”
Mitsui said nothing, but his eyes tracked Kogure with sudden wariness.
“I had a friend,” Kogure began, the lie coming easier than it should.
“Older than us.
Got injured during a game—knee, like you.
The doctor told him one month of rest.
He didn’t listen.”
The room felt smaller suddenly.
“He came back early.
Pushed through the pain because his team needed him, because he thought he was indispensable.
One bad landing later, his knee shattered—comminuted fracture.
Not only could he never play basketball again, he couldn’t walk without help.
Spent the rest of his high school career in a wheelchair.”
Mitsui’s throat worked.
“That’s…
that’s extreme.
I’m sure—”
“He killed himself three months before graduation.”
The silence that fell was suffocating.
Even Akagi, standing by the window, had gone rigid.
“So no, Mitsui.” Kogure’s voice was quiet now, but iron-hard underneath.
“I don’t think you understand how serious this is.
One month.
If you follow medical advice, you’ll still have a chance to play in the prefectural tournament, assuming we’re not eliminated.”
“But can the team hold out that long?” The vulnerability in Mitsui’s voice was raw.
“Without me—”
“We will.”
Kogure stood, pushing his glasses up in a gesture that felt both familiar and strange.
His reflection in the window showed a thin, unimposing figure—173cm of mediocrity, the perpetual substitute.
But his eyes held something new.
Determination.
Knowledge.
Purpose.
“Mitsui, I promise you—the team won’t be eliminated before you come back.
No matter what it takes.”
The words hung in the air, heavy with conviction.
Ding.
A sound—or was it a feeling?—chimed in the back of Kogure’s mind.
His promise had triggered something.
Here we go.