KAKURENBO
It was inconceivable to anyone who ever knew Tetsuya Kuroko – legendary phantom sixth member of the Generation of Miracles – and what he was capable of, to learn that he had been bested by mere children. But as it turned out, Kuroko’s innate predisposition to draw attention away from himself did not seem to apply to children under five.
Not only was he very much visible to his young charges, the children, who were quite taken with their blue-haired sensei, would constantly follow him around and cling onto him for this and that and every other thing. It was like being marked by an entire class of miniature Takao “Hawk Eye” Kazunaris, and no better event illustrated this than with the kids’ favorite game of Kakurenbo, better known as “hide-and-seek”.
The record so far stood at:
Kids: 22
Kuroko-sensei: 0
In a series of ongoing matches between Kuroko vs. Teiko Kindergarten Class A, it was a total and utter defeat for the former three-time middle school basketball champion and Inter-high match MVP of the year.
There were, of course, other possible contributing factors as to why Kuroko-sensei could possibly lose so spectacularly to a class of precocious little uns.
One: Despite his petite frame compared to his former teammates, Kuroko was still after all, a grown young man of 24 years who stood a good height above his class of four-year-olds and stuck out like a sore thumb;
Two: The kids had a natural “home ground advantage”, considering the furniture and playground equipment were all scaled to accommodate their size. The only thing that Kuroko could fit into was a broom closet located at the corner of the classroom, and it was the first place that the children would automatically think to look having found him there the first time;
Three: No amount of misdirection could misdirect anyone’s attention away from a person in a broom closet.
And so it came to be that the children, amused with their sensei’s lack of hiding skills, started composing a made-up jingle called “Kakuren-kuroko-sen” , and it didn’t take very long before rumors started spreading among the parents of Teiko Kindergarten about an “imaginary sensei” who played hide-and-seek with the children when nobody’s looking.
