Work Text:
Early on, Tenma learns that the essential geometry of life mirrors his jumps: the approach, the ascent, the crest, then the fall.
“Stop flailing after your spikes," a junior league coach advises him when Tenma is young enough that he’s only small, and not yet too small. “Brace yourself for the landing, or you’ll wind up hurting yourself.”
Palms scuffed and knees bruised, Tenma stands from another botched tumble. He does not know how to explain that he does not want to brace for the landing, or even land at all; how he hopes, every time that he launches himself skyward, that perhaps gravity is a tendency and not an absolute law.
His name means cosmos and heaven, and he’s certain that he’s meant for the air.
So he ignores the fall entirely—why should he bother with something so antithetical to his core?—and chooses with every jump to struggle and scuffle and claw his impossible way back up, do anything to suspend himself in flight for even one moment more.
Instead, Tenma ends up with a sprained ankle, and spends the next week on the bench reading the back copies of Weekly Shonen Vie stored behind the gymnasium’s front desk.
Here, too, the pattern is apparent. In literature classes years later, Tenma learns proper terms like rising action and climax and denouement —but he already knows the shape, built deep into the muscle of his legs and feet.
He traces the storylines of his favorite protagonists, scrappy underdogs with bottomless potential, from week to week: the run-up of the worldbuilding exposition, which Tenma finds either fascinating or utterly dull; the ascent of the initial defeats, the training arcs, the newly-forged friendships; the crest of the final showdown, when the protagonist and the final boss cross swords at the height of battle; and finally, the fall.
Even here, Tenma despises the fall.
“It was way too rushed,” Tenma complains as he helps his teammates wipe down volleyballs at the end of practice. “All that buildup, and for what? No wonder it got cancelled.”
“Dude, give it a rest, do you think you could do any better?” they laugh, slapping Tenma’s shoulder good-naturedly.
Yes, Tenma thinks as the conversation drifts to the next subject. Yes, I do.
After all, Tenma knows a bad landing when he sees one. His swollen ankle is proof enough.
Fall badly enough, and you’re stuck on the sidelines for a week, fingertips turning black with newsprint ink rather than callused with spiking practice. Fall badly enough, and your manga gets discontinued rather than renewed for another arc.
So Tenma smothers his compulsion to remain in the air and learns the art of falling with grace, if only to learn how to best transition into his next, hopeful jump.
::::
“Your spikes are shit,” Coach Ukai tells him when Tenma is old enough that he’s no longer small, but too small. “Receives are at least mediocre. You’ve got a better chance of getting on the roster someday if you sign up as a libero.”
Tenma, exhausted and heaving and only half-conscious at the end of his first week of Karasuno’s notorious volleyball club practice, straightens up to his full 165.3 centimeters to imperiously answer, “I’m a wing spiker.”
Coach Ukai chuckles—Tenma learns later that Coach Ukai likes kids with guts, though he won’t abide complete insolence—and leaves Tenma to collapse back to the ground.
This is fine, I’m used to being the underdog, Tenma thinks, though there’s a distinct possibility that he will die at the tender age of fifteen if practices continue to be this brutal. I’m back to the beginning of the arc. This is the run-up before the jump.
Tenma’s vision goes marigold yellow. He squints, and rolls his cheek up from the polished wood floor.
A pale-haired second year, arm curled around half a dozen yellow water bottles like a bouquet of flowers, taps cool plastic against Tenma’s temple. “Still breathing?”
With great effort, Tenma pushes himself into a sitting position to accept the bottle. “I think I’m dying.”
The boy laughs and straightens to his impressive height against the sunset pouring in through the gymnasium doors. His shadow must be five meters long, Tenma thinks, as he watches him patiently distribute the bottles among the rest of Tenma’s groaning cohort. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”
“To practice?”
“To dying.”
Tenma snorts so hard that water comes out of his nose.
::::
His name is Akiteru Tsukishima, which Tenma thinks sounds like the name of a manga protagonist, and he is right: Tenma still feels like dying at the end of most practices, but by summer, he at least learns how to die standing up.
He is still dying, though, and Tenma’s hopes of joining the roster during his first year are dashed the moment he witnesses the caliber of Karasuno’s practice matches from his vantage point as a scorekeeper. There are boys twice his size slinging themselves into the air twice as high as Tenma can, and he allows himself a few seconds of righteous envy at their intrusion into his territory before reminding himself that these boys are at the peaks of their arcs, while Tenma is still in the midst of his run-up.
If this were a manga, Tenma still has the training arcs to endure, the alliances to build, the succession of little victories and defeats that will strengthen his body and his resolve until he’s ready for the climactic high of his narrative arc.
And at the apex, Tenma knows he must prepare for the fall, though he will do his utmost to postpone it.
“I’m trying to figure out how to hang in the air longer,” Tenma tells Tsukishima one evening, the two of them at the leisurely tail-end of extra practice.
Tsukishima hands him a yellow water bottle, newly filled from the spigot—just two this time, one for himself and one for Tenma. He hums thoughtfully. “You’re already a pretty decent jumper, but if you want to up your power, I guess you’d focus on exercises that work out your calves, quads, and hamstrings.”
“Glutes too,” adds Kubo, a third year starting outside hitter. “But don’t slack on your upper body, Udai. You’ve gotta stay in spiking shape if you’re gonna take my spot after I graduate, right?”
Kubo is at his peak, Tenma senses, and his plummet toward graduation will begin once Karasuno is knocked out on their way to Spring Nationals. But Kubo is friendly and loud and bothers to dispense advice to a brazen little first year only half-jokingly, so Tenma hopes that Kubo will fly a little longer, or at least be granted a gentle descent.
Tenma glances at Tsukishima. He has no idea where in his arc he is. Tenma has gathered, in snippets of overheard conversation between the seniors or Tsukishima’s own cheerful offhand remarks, that he had been the captain and ace of his middle school team—but plenty of middle school captains and aces are benchwarmers at a powerhouse school like Karasuno.
There’s no real way for Tenma to determine their trajectory until they plunge past him on their way down.
::::
Tenma’s favorite manga aren’t the ones where the protagonist levels up over and over, their strength multiplying exponentially until the stakes of the first few arcs are rendered inane—no, he likes the cleverer sort, the ones who figure out new ways to employ the skills they already have in order to prevail.
Even so, there is a bitterness when Tenma finally admits to himself that no amount of muscle training or protein-rich second lunches will bulk him up in the ways that matter for wing spikers.
This is fine, I’m used to being the underdog, Tenma repeats to himself again and again, a warding spell against the thick miasma of panic as the seasons tick past and he enters his second year. The second-now-third years, with only Tsukishima excluded, join Coach Ukai in his refrain that Tenma would be better off as a libero. Again, Tenma rises to his full 167.9 centimeters and refuses.
He cannot be falling now. He hasn’t even flown.
He’s sent to detention for practicing box jumps on the concrete plant beds outside the library. He’s sent to even more detention for reading manga during class in an attempt to divine an answer from the pages, in the same way he had as a child with a twisted ankle. He knows it’s a stupid endeavor, he is not a boy transported into a fantasy world or a demon hunter with a flaming sword—but there is something sacred in the panels of Shonen Vie that he’s certain he can interpret, like an oracle.
I already knew I’d never be a cannon. I just have to find the unconventional path to the top.
Every evening at extra practice, Tsukishima hands him a yellow water bottle and smiles.
::::
In June, the first time Tenma successfully tools a block, he feels himself soar up, up, up.
::::
Coach Ukai subs Tenma in during a practice match two weeks later, and though he’s blocked out half the time, he manages three tools and threads a neat spike between the opposing blockers’ arms. He jumps higher than the boys who are twice his size, hangs in the air twice as long; when he accepts a water bottle at the end of the set, all his nerves buzzing for him to jump even one more time, Tenma is certain that no one will try to convince him to become a libero again.
Tenma has always told himself that he was meant for the air, but there is comfort in the reassurance that he had been right.
::::
In July, Tenma earns a bench seat for the Interhigh qualifiers.
In August, after Karasuno’s loss to Shiratorizawa in the finals, Tenma inherits Kubo’s starting position as a left-side hitter.
He continues extra practices every night like he has before, though he’s roped into training with the other roster members far more often than he had during his first year. This fairweather companionship fills Tenma with both vindication and annoyance, and he finds himself seeking out the stubbornest first years in the same way that Tsukishima had sought out him.
“I’m quitting club activities after Nationals qualifiers,” Tsukishima tells him one evening as they fill water bottles together, the gold of sunset long since past.
Tenma freezes. His water bottle fills then overflows.
“It’s the norm for third years on the university track, especially if they aren’t on the active roster,” Tsukishima continues, mild and steady and somehow even smiling. His voice does not waver, but Tenma knows by now what it looks like to die standing up. “Truthfully, I should’ve quit after Interhigh, but I’m stubborn. I wanted to stay, even if it was pointless.”
Now Tenma understands the trajectory of Tsukishima’s arc.
“Do me and the rest of us third years a favor, Udai: keep Karasuno in the tournament as long as you can so we can continue hanging around, okay?”
Tsukishima has been falling since before they even met.
“I’ll take us to Nationals,” Tenma blurts out.
Tsukishima raises his eyebrows at him, then smiles. The lights of the gymnasium cut butter yellow squares across him. Tenma does not know how something happening right now can already feel desperately nostalgic. “Pretty cocky of you to say you’ll take down Shiratorizawa after we lost to them in the Interhigh qualifiers.”
“They didn’t have me in the starting lineup back then.”
“Cocky,” Tsukishima repeats. Then, “I believe you.”
Tenma is still rocketing his way upward. He’ll drag the rest of Karasuno with him if he has to.
::::
Tenma keeps his promise.
He turns to the stands, the rest of Karasuno’s bench weeping and piling on top of him as Shiratorizawa’s team solemnly, exhaustedly rises to line up at the net, and discovers that among the swirling flashes of orange and black, there’s no yellow to be found.
::::
Tsukishima and the rest of the inactive third years vanish by November, and only then does Tenma fully understand the way that the color yellow can belong to a person. He sees glints of blond during the school day at the sparse intersections where the second and third years’ paths cross—the cafeteria, the teachers’ offices, the school gate—but even before they had rarely spoken outside of club practice, and there’s something awkward, almost disingenuous about Tenma approaching him now.
He fills up his water bottle alone, or with the little gaggle of gutsy first years he’s somehow amassed, or with whatever middle blocker is helping him perfect his spike into its final, maverick form—but in Tenma’s hands, a water bottle is just a water bottle, ugly mustard color and all.
(Tenma overhears that something involving Tsukishima’s kid brother had happened during the qualifier finals, but he doesn’t pry. It’s not his business, especially if Tsukishima isn’t here to share it himself.)
::::
In January, in Yoyogi Gymnasium, Tenma flies.
The ceiling reaches the stratosphere, and the stadium lights glisten like starlight between his spread fingers before he spikes—and every jump, every meal, every harrowing practice up to this moment ties together perfectly like the best sort of plot threads, and Tenma knows that this is it.
His name means cosmos and heaven; they call him ace and The Little Giant.
He will relish in the heights.
::::
::::
Tenma reaches his third year, sees what’s left of Karasuno’s volleyball club after the graduation of his titanic seniors, and feels the ground vanish beneath his feet.
He’d nursed the futile hope that there might be a little farther to climb, or at least another chance on the national stage. Maybe there would be a deus ex machina, like in his least favorite manga: an overpowering secret technique Tenma could uncover, or a genius rookie hiding among the student body who’d save the club at the last second.
But no. Tenma had reached the apex of his jump in January. No matter how skilled he’s become at suspending himself in the air, the only outcome to resisting gravity is a rolled ankle.
Coach Ukai pulls Tenma out of a particularly agonizing practice match with a What the hell is your problem, you’re out of the starting lineup if you keep this up, and sends him outside to cool off.
He bashes his head into a cabinet, scaring off a girl loitering outside the gym, and takes a moment to bid volleyball goodbye.
::::
It had felt abrupt and premature when Tsukishima had retired after Nationals qualifiers, but when Karasuno loses the ticket to Tokyo for both Interhigh in the summer and Nationals in the fall, Tenma does just that. There is no drama, no fanfare, no tears, even: the gutsy first-now-second years each buy him a meat bun as a goodbye present and Tenma lands on his feet, knees already bent to absorb the shock of it all.
Tenma is used to being an underdog. Tenma knows that a Little Giant’s strength is in finding the unconventional path.
His guidance counselor gawks when Tenma suddenly declares in the middle of November that he’d like to apply to university.
“You aren’t on the college prep track,” she says, fretfully. “You haven’t even taken a practice exam. Are you looking for a volleyball scholarship?”
“Maybe, but I haven’t gotten any offers yet,” Tenma replies.
His counselor gathers a few pamphlets, scrutinizes them, puts one back, then passes the rest over the desk. One university in Sendai, two in Tokyo, one in Matsumoto, and one in Kyoto: Tenma scans over the glossy photos of university campuses, and imagines himself at one of them next April.
“Well, you’re much later than usual for students who decide to change tracks. Tanaka from your class decided she’d take the entrance exams months ago.” The counselor sighs, another crease of worry furrowing her brow. “But I admit, your athletic accomplishments would look nice on a university application, Udai-kun.”
::::
Tenma is by no means a good student, but he is a stubborn one.
Most exams can sense fear, and given that he's survived Coach Ukai’s practice for three years, Tenma feels uniquely equipped to confront them. His first practice scores are dismal, but he does not cower. He’s still in the run-up to his jump, and this is just what being at the bottom feels like.
He now has twenty extra hours every week to study, and is no longer so exhausted every day that he falls asleep during class. He feels like a trespasser the first few times he enters the library to toil through a practice workbook the size of a dictionary, but it becomes a routine soon enough.
He still stops by his neighborhood bookstore every Monday morning to buy the new issue of Weekly Shonen Vie. After all, even without volleyball, he is still himself.
::::
Against all odds, Tenma is accepted into a liberal arts university in Tokyo.
This is a smaller, less personal arc than Nationals had been, so the fall is a pleasant slide to graduation rather than a crash landing. After the closing ceremony, he rips the second button off his uniform and chucks it into the storage room of the second gymnasium.
Now what?, he thinks as he wades through apartment leases and course registration. What’s my next jump going to be?
On his first Monday of university classes, as a familiar anchor before he rushes into the unknown, Tenma buys a copy of Weekly Shonen Vie from a newspaper kiosk near campus. He combs through it for answers, as he always has. The issue falls open across his lap; he thinks about how the pages of an open book look like the wings of a bird.
Oh, Tenma thinks. Of course. It was always this.
::::
Tenma carries out his studies properly, but spends every other moment of his day learning how to draw manga.
He joins the university’s manga research club and finds people as hungry for comics as his teammates at Karasuno had been hungry for volleyball. They only laugh a little when they behold Tenma’s paltry artistic attempts (and this one stings, there’s something about art that makes Tenma feel more vulnerable than volleyball or practice exams) before warmly welcoming him.
“Technical skill is something you can practice,” says Hanamoto, a sophomore with bubblegum-pink glasses frames who’s been selling doujinshi at comic conventions since high school. “Luckily, you’ve been training your good taste for as long as you’ve been critically reading manga. You’re way ahead of the curve compared to someone who’s only good at drawing busts of girls facing left.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Tenma replies.
Hanamoto snorts, delighted. “Udai-kun, if you help me reach my deadline for the next comics expo, I’ll buy you dinner.”
::::
“Oh my god,” Tenma says one bowl of miso ramen later, sitting at Hanamoto’s coffee table with an ink bottle and a small stack of pages before him.
“Fill in the places I marked with an ‘x’ with beta—that means solid black,” Hanamoto instructs from her desk.
“I’m not allowed to look at these. I’m a child.”
“You’re eighteen. And they’re only lines.”
“These lines are forming a dick.”
“Udai-kun, I promise BL can’t hurt you.”
“It hurts my spirit.”
“I’ll teach you how to do screentone if you finish the betas quickly.”
Tenma twists the cap of a fresh ink bottle, the seal breaking with a satisfying crack. “I do want to learn how to use screentone.”
“Good boy,” Hanamoto says.
::::
The run-up takes longer this time, but Tenma’s had a lot of practice by now.
He enrolls in a beginners art class during his second semester, then a life drawing class as a sophomore. He does beta and screentones and draws microscopic background characters for his senpai as they scramble to finish their doujinshi for comics expos, then volunteers to help vend the finished products at summer Comiket. In the winter, Hanamoto and Izumi, two of the members seriously aiming to become manga-ka one day, take Tenma to an art supply store in Shibuya to buy his first G-pen.
He reads all the shonen manga stored in the club room, then all the shoujo manga when Vice President Yanagi insists that Tenma needs to broaden his palate, then all the seinen and josei. He debates with his clubmates about why Fullmetal Alchemist is the best shonen manga of all time, and nearly comes to blows with perennial Hunter x Hunter fanatic Matsumoto and Dragonball diehard Wada until club President Noguchi breaks up the fight.
(They are all wrong, anyway. Using his authority as club president, Noguchi declares that the official best shonen manga of all time is One Piece, and leaves the rest of them to stew in it.)
Tenma self-publishes doujinshi alongside Hanamoto at a handful of comics expos during his junior year; in March, when he bids her farewell at graduation, he decides that he will spend the summer working on his own original story.
By fall of his senior year, he finishes a oneshot to submit to Weekly Shonen Vie’s newcomer award.
::::
Tenma receives a phone call that his submission has won an honorable mention, and he skips afternoon classes the next day to take the train to Chiyoda. He is used to being the underdog: but standing in the sleek lobby of the Shonen Vie headquarters with his shaggy hair and plain Uniqlo jacket, Tenma finds that for once he truly feels too small, rather than just small .
An editor, with the thick envelope containing Tenma’s manuscript under his arm, invites him to the lobby’s embedded cafe for their meeting.
Tenma stares at the reflection of the light fixtures on the surface of his coffee—coffee is too bitter for his liking, but it felt rude to decline—and lets his nervous fingers dance around the lip of the cup as he listens:
Your story about a high school delinquent discovering the existence of crow-winged tengu impressed the judges with its excellent characterization and impressive pacing, but the art is not quite polished enough for a serialized series by Shonen Vie’s standards. The more granular issues are listed on the judges’ comment cards, which are xeroxed and included in the packet I have here. Before we dive in any further, Udai-san, let me first give you this.
The editor, Fukuda, presents Tenma with his business card with both hands.
“You have potential,” Fukuda says, “And I’ll keep an eye out for your name if you decide to submit again in the future.”
After four years of run-up, Tenma feels himself begin to float.
On the first Monday of December, Tenma and the rest of the university’s manga research club bundle into their warmest winter clothes to meet outside the neighborhood bookshop at 7:30 am. The moment it opens, they each rush in to buy a copy of Weekly Shonen Vie: and there, from pages 112 to 144, is Tenma’s oneshot.
Tenma holds the issue to his chest all morning as he wanders through campus, arms crossed over the thick volume, knuckles chapped from the cold. He locks himself in a stall in the fourth floor bathroom of the sociology department building and cries so hard that he misses his morning lecture.
::::
In January, Tenma hears that Karasuno has made it to Spring Nationals for the first time since Tenma’s second year.
He’d promised Editor Fukuda that he would meet with him on Tuesday to discuss becoming a manga-ka assistant, but Karasuno had muscled its way even farther than Tenma had, and he can’t help but feel a rush of fraternal fondness for these fellow underdogs—fallen champions, flightless crows—who have catapulted themselves into the sky.
He goes alone, because none of his clubmates are interested in high school sports or even believe that Tenma had once been a national level athlete. Unfamiliar with the new venue, he succumbs to the push and pull of the crowd, and considers asking a passerby to film him leaping next to the 3.5 meter vertical reach board to prove his jump height to the other club members—
When out of the corner of his eye, Tenma sees yellow.
His feet are already propelling him forward by the time he realizes he is running.
“Oh, hey!” Tenma calls out before he can stop himself. “Tsukishima-san, is that you?”
::::
He turns, honey in the January gray, and smiles.
::::
::::
That day, Tenma watches Karasuno lose their quarterfinal match. The back of Tenma’s throat aches with empathy, but he knows better than anyone that falls are part of the natural progression of life, and this iteration of Karasuno is not the type of team that will dwell on the ground for long.
And he has not heard the words The Little Giant spoken so often in years.
Tanaka—even brighter and bolder than he remembers, as formidable as the day when she had jokingly (though convincingly) threatened to punch Tenma if she passed her college entrance exams and he didn’t—introduces Tenma to a little sun. On the other side of the net, he watches a boy shoot through the air like a meteor, sharper and freer and far more deserving of the title than Tenma had ever been.
“If Shouyou hadn’t ever seen you on TV that day, he never would’ve chosen to bike over a mountain to go to Karasuno,” Tanaka muses as they stare at the emptied court. “He never would’ve met Tobio.”
Tenma thinks that for a story as grand as one that would center Shouyou Hinata or Kourai Hoshiumi, he does not mind being their prologue.
::::
Because his meeting with Editor Fukuda and Ito-sensei isn't until 2 pm the next day, Tenma agrees to have one or two beers with the rest of the Karasuno alumni.
Because Tanaka is there, it ends up being a lot more than one or two.
At some point they spill into the empty back lot of the izakaya and a volleyball is conjured out of thin air. There’s no net, so they all stumble into a circle to clumsily pass the ball in high, easy arcs between them.
Bumping the ball hurts far more than Tenma remembers—just squatting hurts far more than Tenma remembers—and his heart breaks a little at the way he can’t quite make the ball do what he wants even though his body remembers what it should feel like. Some of it he can blame on the beers, of course, but there’s another part of him that understands that something essential in himself has changed.
“What’re you up to these days?” Tenma asks Tsukishima as Shimada’s pass goes wide, lodging the ball in the bare branches of a tree. The words feel distant, almost performative, and they sour Tenma’s mouth.
“I’m just your average office worker,” Tsukishima replies, friendly but equally perfunctory. “You?”
“Finishing my thesis, and looking into some work stuff.”
“Oh, are you on the job hunt?”
“Something like that.” Tenma hesitates for a moment, strangely self-conscious, before saying, “You still play volleyball, don’t you.”
Tsukishima glances down from watching Takinoue’s attempts to poke the ball down with a broom. The sodium lamplights cast the planes of his face in—yellow, Tenma thinks wryly.
“Yeah, I joined a municipal team while I was in college in Sendai,” Tsukishima confirms. He quirks an eyebrow up. “How’d you know?”
“We’re five beers in, and your aim is better than mine would be sober,” Tenma replies.
The corners of Tsukishima’s mouth tug up, pleased. In high school, Tenma thought that Tsukishima had been falling; now, there’s something solid and comfortable in his posture that assures Tenma that he must be back on the rise again.
“If you end up in Sendai again after graduation, you’re welcome to join us,” Tsukishima offers. “Kei crashes our practice every once in a while, and I’m sure a lot of them would be excited to meet Karasuno’s original Little Giant.”
This feels a bit like the first time Tsukishima had handed Tenma a water bottle all those years ago: a senior who has no reason to be so considerate to an underclassman, but chooses to anyway. Maybe it’s because he’s a big brother, Tenma reflects. There’s always been something about Tsukishima that has made Tenma feel safe.
“Thanks, but I’m probably staying in Tokyo after I graduate.” Tenma shoves his cold hands under his armpits. “Most manga-ka live in Tokyo.”
Tsukishima angles his entire body toward Tenma now, eyes wide with surprise. “You’re a manga-ka, Udai?”
“That’s what I’m aiming for, at least. I won a little award with a oneshot I sent into Vie, but I’m not good enough to be serialized yet.”
“Even so, congratulations. Are you in art school?”
“No, I’m a sociology major.” Tenma scratches the back of his head awkwardly. “I wanted to challenge myself with something new after I quit volleyball, but I didn’t realize until I got to university that what I really wanted to try was completely different.”
“Now that I think about it, you were always towing around those giant volumes of Shonen Vie to Monday practices,” Tsukishima laughs, casting a big puff of steam into the January air. “Man, first becoming Karasuno’s ace, then passing your college entrance exams, now winning manga awards while you’re still a student—you really do everything you set your mind to, Udai. You’re so cool.”
His laugh is suddenly so warm and familiar that Tenma feels himself drawn back to those evenings of extra practice in Karasuno’s gym, sliding in reverse over the big and little arcs he’s challenged himself with so quickly that he nearly trips. His face warms despite the chill.
“I’m just… stubborn,” Tenma manages, embarrassed that his voice comes out a little strangled, glad that the dim streetlights hide his clumsy expression. “You know, I just kind of hit my head against things until it works out, or I figure out a weird way to get what I want. I’m too dumb to give up.”
“I guess after Coach Ukai, we’ve learned how to endure almost anything,” Tsukishima replies.
::::
Ito-sensei is a friendly man in his mid-thirties who squeezes his wife’s hand after she sets down tea for them, and he tells Tenma that he’d enjoyed his newcomer contest submission. Tenma, who has read Ito-sensei’s manga since he was a senior in high school, promptly forgets all of his prepared self-introduction.
“What happened to your arms?” Editor Fukuda whispers when Ito-sensei steps out to the restroom.
Tenma looks down and is surprised to see a harsh array of bruises and pinpoint bleeding against the pale skin of his inner forearms. He rolls the sleeves of his hoodie down past his wrists.
“I played a little volleyball with some of my high school classmates last night,” Tenma explains awkwardly.
Editor Fukuda looks Tenma up and down—finds a scrawny, round-cheeked, 170.2 centimeter college student whose jeans still smells faintly like last night’s spilled beer—and gives him a doubtful grin.
Tenma is used to being underestimated, but oh, he still hates it.
::::
Tenma graduates college and discovers that his meager earnings as a manga assistant barely cover rent, much less food, internet, and art supplies. He considers returning to Miyagi to regroup, and there’s real comfort in the idea of moving back home, near enough to Karasuno to attend their games with Tsukishima and Tanaka and the other alumni—but then he remembers, After Coach Ukai, we’ve learned how to endure almost anything.
Instead, Tenma applies for a job at a nearby convenience store and another gig as an on-call assistant for a few other manga-ka. Hanamoto becomes a regular in a BL manga magazine, and when her deadlines loom over her, she summons Tenma with bowls of miso ramen and promises to teach him the digital art program she utilizes to make her manga.
“I hope you’re still working on your own projects, Udai-kun,” Editor Fukuda remarks one afternoon in September when they cross paths at Ito-sensei’s house.
These days, it feels like he spends more time simply staying afloat than working toward the run-up of his life’s greatest jump—but as easy as it would be to complain or to sling back some jaded platitude, he replies with his Little Giant tenacity, “Yes, I have things in the works.”
::::
After half a year of instant ramen and conbini onigiris, wearing the same Uniqlo jacket and jeans and pair of old Keds he’s donned since college, foregoing the haircut he objectively knows he needs: Tenma saves enough to buy a drawing tablet.
He submits a oneshot for another award and places again among the honorable mentions. The art is better, Editor Fukuda assures him, but the reader surveys aren’t good enough for serialization. Tenma saves the special issue of Shonen Vie on his bookshelf nevertheless.
::::
Karasuno again earns Miyagi’s slot to Nationals in January 2014: so, another six beers, another volleyball magicked into Tenma’s unsteady hands, another empty lot filled with yellow lamplight.
“The run up is taking a lot longer than I thought this time,” Tenma mumbles, too dizzy to even stand in the circle of other alumni.
Tsukishima, not nearly as far gone and attempting to force Tenma to sip from a bottle of water, charitably replies, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Udai.”
“You know, like before a jump,” Tenma says, the bottle missing his mouth and instead splashing water over his shoulder. He frowns at his hand, betrayed. “Life’s just a cycle of run-ups, jumps, and falls. When I got that newcomer award, I thought I was at the start of a really big jump… but it feels like I’ve been stuck on the ground all year.”
“That’s a pretty dramatic worldview, but I guess it fits a manga-ka,” Tsukishima says. He realigns Tenma’s arm. The lip of the bottle hits Tenma’s front teeth, but the water ends up mostly in his mouth.
“Did I peak in high school?” Tenma groans, nursing his aching tooth. “I think I peaked in high school. Oh no, Tsukishima-san, I don’t want to have peaked in high school.”
“You’re spiraling, Udai.”
“I thought there were bigger jumps left in me, but maybe being a pretty good volleyball player in high school was it. Maybe that’s as high as I go, and now life is just a long, sad downhill slope until I’m dead.”
“You’re spiraling,” Tsukishima repeats, taking the sloshing water bottle from Tenma’s hands and capping it. Tenma vacantly wonders how many bottles of water have passed between the two of them in their lives. Hundreds, probably. It’s nice to have Tsukishima hand him water bottles again after so long.
Tsukishima contemplates the bottle for a second, warm brown eyes focused on the droplets clinging to the thin plastic, before quietly saying, “For most people, I don’t think life usually follows those kinds of satisfying story arcs. If you assume there’s a path that life should follow, you’ll just end up disappointed when it doesn’t.”
Tenma looks up from where he’s curled himself around his knees.
“And anyway,” Tsukishima continues, steadier, “You make it sound like all your achievements will stop mattering once you reach them. If that’s the case, doesn’t that make it kind of pointless to struggle toward things at all? I mean, all I seem to do is struggle, whether I end up succeeding or not.”
There’s a bitter edge in his next chuckle, no doubt remembering the hundreds of hours of extra practice that he and Tenma shared, and how it hadn’t even amounted to a spot on Karasuno’s active roster.
Gravity is a law, no matter how many times Tenma has prayed for it to be a tendency. But Tsukishima is a volleyball player too, a Karasuno player regardless of whether or not he had ever played in a game, which means he’s good at jumps: Tenma wonders if Tsukishima realizes that thanks to all those years of effort he’d put into the run-up, he’s been suspended in the air above Tenma for years.
“I’ve never thought any of your efforts were pointless,” Tenma says.
Tsukishima blinks, and his expression softens to something unfathomable—or perhaps it’s simply the darkness, or Tenma is too drunk to make sense of the details. He returns the near-empty bottle to Tenma’s knee. Tenma wonders if Tsukishima notices that these are the same jeans he’d worn when they’d met the year before.
“Thanks, Udai,” Tsukishima says, a quiet moment later.
::::
Years pass, dissolving in Tenma’s hands.
He wears the soles of his shoes thin, clambering to find the unconventional path to victory like the protagonists of his favorite stories always could, seeking the manga-ka equivalent of tooling the block when spiking through had not worked. Thanks to club vice-president Yanagi’s order to read all the different genres of manga that could be found in the manga research clubroom, Tenma widens the scope of his works: a horror oneshot set in a boarding school; a slapstick school romantic comedy; a mystery set in the 1960s with a highschool girl detective.
He submits in more special issues and contests and occasionally receives recognition, even placing second in one competition. When the prize money appears in his bank account, he treats Hanamoto to a bowl of ramen.
Congratulations on second place ( ´ ▽ ` ) ! , Tsukishima texts while Tenma and Hanamoto fight over the last gyoza. It’s always incredible to see your name printed in Vie.
Hanamoto snatches the gyoza while Tenma is distracted by his text tone.
“You going to that volleyball tournament again this year?” Hanamoto asks, mouth obnoxiously full of pork and fried dough.
Tenma shrugs, reading Tsukishima’s message a few more times. “Karasuno didn’t make it to Nationals this year. And even if they did, my friend’s little brother graduated, so who knows if he’d have gone anyway.”
“Lonely? If I meet my deadline that week, I can go with you.”
“No, it’s alright,” Tenma replies, locking his phone. "This is a good thing. Now I have more time to work on my next manga.”
::::
::::
When Tenma turns twenty-five, Editor Fukuda deposits him in the hands of rookie editor Keiji Akaashi.
It is not abandonment exactly, but the unspoken sentiment of After four years, you are an artist I can afford to let go stings nevertheless.
Tenma is used to being the underdog; but underdogs are only worth rooting for if they beat the odds, and Tenma is no longer certain that he will. His sore feet sink more deeply into the ground, like mud.
The story of an underdog who succumbs to the odds is a cautionary tale.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Udai-sensei,” Akaashi says with incredible politeness. Other than his mouth, Tenma does not see any muscles in his elegant face move. “I will be in your care.”
“I’ll be in your care,” Tenma repeats back.
::::
Tsukishima’s little brother joins a Division 2 team, and their yearly Spring Nationals meetups transform into handfuls of izakaya visits when the Sendai Frogs have matches in Tokyo.
These evenings are much gentler on Tenma’s liver now that Tanaka is no longer present to goad them into double digit drinks, but Tenma finds that he misses her raucous intervention.
“How’re your jumps lately?” Tsukishima asks.
“I’m still not in the air yet,” Tenma sighs, poking at a chicken and leek skewer. It’s mortifying to admit to his parents, to his old university clubmates, and even to Hanamoto that his efforts over these past few years have been futile, but it’s easier with Tsukishima. He, more than anyone, understands what years of futile effort feel like—and it gives Tenma hope to know that Tsukishima’s efforts did bear fruit, just much later.
“But you’re going to keep at it?”
“Yeah.” Tenma sighs again. “You know me, too dumb to give up.”
“Stubbornness isn’t dumb. It makes for a great manga protagonist.”
“Or a frustrating one.”
“Oh, I don’t know, I like stubborn people,” Tsukishima laughs, before taking a swig of his beer and launching into another story about Kei.
::::
Akaashi is enormous—as tall as Tsukishima, Tenma reckons—and no muscles in his face move when he reads Tenma’s manuscripts. Though Tenma gleans that he has a four or five year seniority over fresh-university-graduate-Keiji-Akaashi, Tenma still finds his impassive, impenetrable demeanor a little bit terrifying.
“There is a sense of instability in tone,” Akaashi says after the eight minute dead silence he’d spent looking over Tenma’s draft. “It’s not strictly necessary to adhere to conventional genres, but the mood is split between a comedy and a more straightforward action-drama.”
Trust Akaashi-san to stab right into the heart of the matter without hesitation, Tenma thinks gloomily. “I thought so too. I’ve been experimenting with mixing genres in order to make something original, but it doesn’t always work out.”
“Would you like to move forward with this?”
“Is it worth salvaging?”
“It would require heavy edits before I would feel confident in entering it into a contest.”
“Then I’ll try something else,” Tenma sighs, and Akaashi slides the draft back over the table. He glances at Akaashi as he stashes it into his backpack, then ventures, “Say, Akaashi-san, have you read my other oneshots?”
Akaashi looks up from refreshing the coffee in his paper cup. It’s his second of the meeting. “Yes, I read them when I was assigned to be your editor.”
“Which one did you think was the best?”
He knows that Akaashi has a literary bent, so Tenma predicts he’ll choose something cerebral, like the historical detective story or the psychological horror. But, to Tenma’s surprise, Akaashi answers, “‘Best’ and ‘favorite’ are different measures. Your best work is the mystery oneshot that won second prize. My favorite is your first oneshot about the tengu and the delinquent.”
After a beat of startled silence, Tenma asks, “Really?”
“Does that surprise you?” Akaashi puts down his coffee cup, and folds his large hands in his lap. “It convinced Fukuda-san to invest in you. There is a certain earnestness throughout all your works that shines brightest there—when I first read it, I was relieved to find I would be working with an artist whose stories I could honestly advocate for.”
Again, Akaashi speaks as if his expression has no association with the words exiting his mouth. Even so, Tenma feels something uncoil in him, unfolding. Tenma is an amateur with four years of work and nothing to show for it, and Akaashi is the youngest editor in the office with everything to prove.
He is not the only underdog sitting at this table, and this one believes in him.
“Maybe instead of focusing all my efforts on being unconventional or original, I’ll try to return to what made that first oneshot honest,” Tenma muses.
Akaashi’s lips press together, then the ends shift up. Tenma feels instantly struck.
“I look forward to your next draft,” Akaashi says, standing and bowing over the table. “Thank you for your hard work, Udai-sensei.”
::::
The reader survey results for Tenma’s zombie samurai oneshot are heartstopping. Akaashi’s voice wavers ever so slightly over the phone when he informs Tenma that his pitch had been greenlit at the serialization meeting, which is how Tenma knows that Akaashi must be as close to bursting as he is.
Being the Little Giant won’t be the highest peak of my life, Tenma finds himself thinking as he sinks to the ground of his kitchenette, clutching his phone against his ear with both hands. Thank god, thank god.
There are still greater heights for Tenma to discover.
It’s been years since Tenma last felt the rush of flight, and now he’s ravenous: it tastes like joy, mostly, with the ever-present strain of vindication and spite that powers him once the sugar sweetness of joy fades.
The path to the top is clear once more, and Tenma scrambles to suspend himself in the air for as long as possible.
::::
Tenma scrambles, over-eager, and botches the liftoff.
He had once been invincible in aerial battle, but he’s unpracticed after five years on the ground, in the same way that he can no longer bump volleyballs without breaking blood vessels. Tenma knows that he’s meant for the air, it’s in his goddamn name, but he’s been bound to the earth for so long that he’s somehow rendered himself afraid of heights: he wants it too badly, too frantically, and it ruins him.
Even Akaashi’s steady and blunt editorial hand cannot hold together Zombie Knight Zom’bish .
“I don’t have a clear image of where the story is headed,” Akaashi admits after he looks over Tenma’s newest chapter draft. It’s 2 pm, which means he must be on at least his third cup of coffee of the day, but his hands do not falter as he flips through the pages. “There are many interesting plot threads you can pursue, but you cannot follow all of them.”
“Which one do you think I should choose?” Tenma asks.
“It depends what your ultimate goal for the story is,” Akaashi replies. “Again, that is for you to decide, because I don’t have a clear image of where the plot is headed. What is your ultimate goal, Udai-sensei?”
Tenma’s ultimate goal is to remain serialized for as long as possible. The fall is unavoidable—few series are allowed to continue indefinitely, story arc after story arc persisting into blissful oblivion—but Tenma will do anything to postpone it.
“I just… I don’t know which idea is the most compelling.”
Akaashi pokes the frames of his glasses up with a dignified knuckle. “Choosing one and working with me toward making it as compelling as possible will be much more effective than not choosing any option, Udai-sensei.”
Tenma winces. There it is again, Akaashi’s hammer-blunt frankness. Not scolding, not accusatory, but so honest that it may as well be a volleyball spiked straight into Tenma’s gut.
Tenma knows that Akaashi is simply asking him to make a decision. Tenma has made countless decisions before, vast and daring and foolhardy gambits that have often paid off in the end—but now, Akaashi’s onerous belief and the terror of this tremendous opportunity weigh him down so heavily that he wonders if he can remember how to fly.
::::
“Zom’bish is ending. There are only seven chapters left.”
::::
Tenma is in wild freefall.
“I’m sorry that it had to end this way,” Akaashi says quietly as Tenma stamps some legal documents that he vaguely understands to mean that his first series is officially over. “I should have been able to secure more than seven chapters.”
“No, you’re the newest editor, it’s impressive that you managed to negotiate enough chapters for another print volume,” Tenma says a bit numbly.
Tenma knows this will be an ugly landing, far worse than spraining an ankle and being sent to the sidelines of volleyball practice for a week. He should focus on minimizing the damage so he can quickly recover for his next series—plenty of manga-ka bounce back from cancellations, Tenma knows, he knows —but even the idea of it exhausts Tenma to the point of tears.
“I’m sorry your first editorial project had to end this way,” Tenma says.
Akaashi looks up from his cup of coffee. Tenma can’t guess how many he’s had today, but there must have been many, because Akaashi’s fingers are just barely trembling.
“No, Udai-sensei,” Akaashi says, and suddenly, for the first time, Tenma can see in his glass green eyes just how young Akaashi is. “I know how hard you worked. I saw it. Please don’t apologize to me.”
::::
Tenma’s name means cosmos and heaven, but just because it sounds like the name of a manga protagonist doesn’t mean that he actually is one. Really, it only means that his mother had possessed a dramatic naming sense, and that Tenma had been foolish enough from ages eleven to twenty-six to believe that something as arbitrary as a name could portend anything.
::::
“I want to get drunk,” Tenma says. “I want to get completely blackout drunk.”
Tanaka sighs, tinny from the other end of the line. He can hear the noisy clangs of the motorcycle repair shop behind her. “If you’re drinking because you’re sad, I’m not gonna indulge you. But if you’re gonna drink anyway, I’ll come over to at least keep an eye on you.”
Tenma looks at the half-empty Asahi Super Dry already in his hand.
“I’m going to drink anyway.”
::::
If Zom’bish’s cancellation had been the beginning of the fall, waking up at 2 pm with his skull pounding like one of Tanaka’s taiko drums is certainly the bedrock-bottom.
An aspirin and a bottle of water sit on the corner of his nightstand, and he gratefully chokes them down before burrowing back under his comforter against the clear midday sunlight. What sort of adult wallows in bed with the sun so high in the sky? He is lower than bedrock-bottom. He’s sunken into the Earth’s mantle—no, all the way down to the molten core. He will never emerge again, much less leave his bed.
He undoes his half-wrecked ponytail in an attempt to ease the tension in his head and discovers a sparkly red hair elastic he’s never seen before in his life. He pats his chest and thigh, pulls at his sleeve to squint at the faded blue cotton—oh no, these are not the hoodie and sweats he was wearing yesterday, Tenma realizes with dawning horror.
He has a lot to apologize to Tanaka for now.
As if Tanaka can hear his thoughts, her laughter suddenly filters in, dulled by the blankets and thin walls of his apartment. It’s followed by a second, gentler voice. Tenma sits up in his bed.
After a full minute of hardship, he somehow prevails against the vice-grip of gravity tethering him to his mattress and wills himself to the door. He flinches at every click of the knob.
Two blond heads turn: Tanaka, neatly arranged on Tenma’s two-seat sofa, and Tsukishima, on the floor with his long legs folded in a convoluted knot to fit under the coffee table. Tenma can’t compute where in his tiny living room Tsukishima could have possibly slept last night.
“Sorry about this,” Tenma rasps out. “Thanks for the aspirin and water.”
Tanaka laughs again, and though it rings painfully in his ears, Tenma is glad to hear something so joyful directed at him for the first time in weeks. “You look like shit, dude. Take a shower, brush your teeth, then go straight back to bed.”
::::
When Tenma returns to his room with his mouth tasting like mint, he finds Tsukishima lining up a banana, a sports drink, and another bottle of water on his desk.
“You’re always giving me water bottles,” Tenma says.
Tsukishima turns, then grins as he holds up the bottle. “I guess I always am, huh? You feeling okay?”
“I feel like I’m dying." He crawls back into bed, and Tsukishima reaches over to tug the edge of the blanket up to Tenma’s chin in a thoroughly embarrassing, big brotherly sort of way.
“Well, at least you’ve got a lot of experience with dying,” Tsukishima says as he straightens from where he’s hovering over the bed. “I’m not worried. You’re the Little Giant, Udai. You'll be back on your feet soon enough.”
There is such candid and generous certainty in Tsukishima’s words that Tenma’s eyes go hot.
This is different from Editor Fukuda, who had invested in him because he’d won an award, or Akaashi, who had read through all of his works and decided that he could afford to be hopeful in their partnership: Tsukishima, who’s witnessed all of Tenma’s flaws and shortcomings since he was fifteen years old, who’s listened to Tenma drunkenly fret over his failures for the past five years, who should by all accounts resent Tenma for his baseless bravado while he himself quietly toiled away—against all logic and reason, believes in him anyway.
Tenma wants to punch him. He also wants to hug him for ten minutes straight. He mostly wants to tell him that he should save all that patience and belief for someone who actually deserves it, like Shouyou Hinata, or Kourai Hoshiumi, or himself.
What Tenma manages to say is, “When I was in the bathroom, I threw up then sat down in the shower for ten minutes.”
“Well, no one said you had to get straight back to jumping,” Tsukishima replies, just a bit of his warm laughter beneath it. He sits on the edge of Tenma’s mattress, dipping it with his weight.
Tenma can see his back, and just a slice of his face over his tall shoulder. He murmurs up to him, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do if I’m not jumping, though.”
“Well, I destroyed my room when I hit rock bottom with Kei, but I don’t recommend that.” Tsukishima glances down, and snorts when he meets Tenma’s saucer-round eyes.
“You destroyed your room?”
“I was a teenager. It was all very melodramatic and uncool.”
“I want to destroy my room, but I’ll lose my deposit,” Tenma grumbles, disappointed.
“Rest,” Tsukishima says emphatically, sounding at once like an older brother and a senpai and a worried, good friend. “Maybe try something totally unrelated to manga. Throw a tantrum, or fall into despair for a little bit. It’s alright to take a break and whine, as long as you get back to it eventually.”
“‘It’?” Tenma repeats, propping himself on his elbow.
Tsukishima tilts his head up toward the ceiling. The only yellow thing in the room is Tsukishima’s hair in the slanted afternoon light, but at least he paints the room with it. “You know. Life. Life generally isn’t a bunch of life-altering jumps: it just keeps going.”
The click of Tanaka’s boots on the linoleum floor sounds from the genkan. Tenma sits up to send them off and offer Tanaka one more apology, but Tsukishima pushes him back down with a large, gentle palm to the forehead.
“Just… Come back home to Miyagi for New Years, alright?” Tsukishima says as he stands to leave.
The bed evens out as Tsukishima’s weight lifts from it, and Tenma swallows hard. He thinks of the second button he'd thrown into Karasuno’s second gym all those years ago.
“Sure,” Tenma says. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”
::::
Over coffee, Tenma learns that Akaashi played volleyball too.
It’s not a terrible shock, because Akaashi is well over 180 centimeters tall and has some of the longest, most graceful hands Tenma has ever seen. It is a bit of a surprise to learn that he has personal ties to a large chunk of the V.League circuit, including half of Japan’s Men’s National Team.
“I will take you to Sendai on November seventeenth to join me in interviewing Bokuto-san,” Akaashi states one afternoon, mere seconds after they’ve exchanged greetings in the lobby. Nothing in his tone implies that it is a request.
“Sendai? Why not wait until there's a match in Tokyo?”
“You’re from Miyagi, and your Karasuno underclassmen, Kageyama and Hinata, will be playing against each other. After the interview, we can get drinks in Kokubuncho.”
It's been months since Tenma has gone out with anyone, excepting his meetings with Akaashi in the Shonen Vie offices. Tenma considers that he would like to see proper, buttoned-up Keiji Akaashi drunk, and desperately wants to see Akaashi interact with the wild bundle of energy that is Koutarou Bokuto.
He’s touched by Akaashi’s plans to cheer him up, as carefully considered as all things Akaashi does—and though Tenma has impending deadlines and plans to return to Miyagi less than two months from now, he remembers of Tsukishima’s advice, and agrees.
::::
They are late, and they even miss the first three rallies while Akaashi chats away with the onigiri stall owner. Soon, however, both Little Giants are before him again, so free and dazzling as they hang in midair that Tenma nearly forgets to breathe.
He had been twenty-one when he first saw them, fresh off the publication of his newcomer award oneshot in Shonen Vie; now, almost exactly six years later, he’s fresh off the cancellation of his first series in the same magazine.
The cycles—they just won’t leave him.
“Akaashi-san,” Tenma says as they wait for Bokuto in a conference room, "Have I ever told you my dumb life philosophy?"
Akaashi looks up from fiddling with his phone’s recording app. “I don’t believe so.”
“Well, I read so much manga and played so much volleyball as a kid that I thought that life was supposed to follow arcs.” Tenma traces out the peaks and valleys of his life with little undulations of his hands. “Kind of like a jump for a spike, or a narrative arc: too small to play volleyball—”
— run-up—
“—practice like hell, figure out how to tool a block—”
— rise—
“—become Karasuno’s Little Giant at Nationals—”
— peak—
“—and quit volleyball after high school.”
— fall.
“Decide I want to draw manga—”
—run-up—
“—take some art classes and help my senpai draw their doujinshi—”
— rise—
“—win an honorable mention in the newcomer awards—”
— peak—
“—then enter the grind of trying to become serialized.”
— fall.
Tenma pauses, hand frozen in the fall. “The pattern fell apart with Zom’bish, though. Iffy liftoff, bad landing... you know.”
Akaashi watches Tenma thoughtfully, finger tapping on his phone case. The gesture is contemplative, not agitated, so Tenma doesn’t worry about guessing the number of coffees Akaashi has had today.
“That’s a rather simplified view of life, but it’s not a ‘dumb’ one,” Akaashi says after his long pause. “In fact, I think it has prepared you for the repetitive life of a manga-ka quite well: every week is an agonizing upward climb of storyboards, inks, and deadlines, where you will fall from the heights of a completed chapter and begin anew from nothing. Once you are serialized again, I will do my utmost to ensure that this painful weekly jump cycle continues for many years.”
Tenma laughs, endlessly amused by the way Akaashi's eccentricities spill out from his solemn face. “The way you’re phrasing it makes you sound like a sadist, but I appreciate your faith in me, Akaashi-san.”
“Of course,” Akaashi replies, smiling one of his rare, reserved smiles. “Protagonists often stumble into defeat on their way to the final battle. Who’s to say that Zom’bish was meant to be the climax? I think you and I have a lot more stumbling to do before we reach the true apex of our arc together, Udai-sensei.”
::::
In their final meeting before New Years, Tenma presents Akaashi with the storyboards for a volleyball-themed oneshot.
Several muscles move in Akaashi’s face as he reads through Tenma’s storyboards, an extraordinarily expressive reaction. His coffee remains untouched.
“I would like you to enter this into the next special issue,” Akaashi says after he finishes reading. His hands flutter over the pages. “There are several areas where I would like to suggest revisions, but I think this may become my favorite work of yours yet.”
::::
In late December, Tenma brings his storyboard to his parents’ house in Miyagi. Then, he calls Tsukishima to ask how to receive permission to take reference photos of Karasuno for his next manga. There is a byzantine tangle of bureaucracy to navigate, but somehow, by the Vice-Principal-via-Takeda-sensei-via-Coach-Ukai-via-Shimada-san-via-Tsukishima-san, Tenma returns to his old high school campus.
“Kei-kun didn’t want to come along?” Tenma asks as he tosses the second gymnasium key ring high into the air and catches it.
Tsukishima grins. “Unless strictly necessary, Kei doesn’t leave the kotatsu between the months of December and February.”
The campus is smaller than he remembers, more like a child’s playhouse than the actual setting of his youth. He finds there are sensations that he wants to convey in his manga that he can’t quite capture on film: the crisp air of the walkway between the school building and the gymnasium; the way the metal sliding doors leave his hands smelling of rust; how Tsukishima, still his senpai despite all the intervening years, plucks the keys from Tenma’s hands as a matter of habit, accustomed to being the last senior member to leave for the night.
“The last time I was here was when I threw my second button into a volleyball cart after graduation,” Tenma remarks as he climbs onto the stage to photograph the full length of the empty courts. “I had to sneak in and everything.”
Tsukishima unlocks the closet at the far end. “You really were such a rowdy kid.”
“Who’d you give your second button to?”
“No one! Giving away second buttons only happens in manga and TV dramas.”
Tenma watches Tsukishima emerge from the storage room through the viewfinder his camera. Tsukishima is older now, less gawky in his long-limbed height, in his winter coat rather than a black jogging suit: but the distant sight of him in Karasuno’s gymnasium, rolling out the net equipment on an old, squeaky dolly, is so unexpectedly nostalgic that it winds him.
“But we wore gakurans!” Tenma insists, breathless, letting the camera fall to his side on its strap and hopping down from the platform. “You have to give away your second button at graduation!”
“You just said you threw yours away.”
“I gave it to the volleyballs! Because I loved volleyball!”
“You’re so dramatic,” Tsukishima laughs as Tenma helps him lock a net post into its slot. “Everything you do could come straight out of a manga.”
Tenma expects the accusation to sting, but it doesn’t. Nothing Tsukishima ever says to Tenma has sharp edges. “I’m trying to be more realistic about it nowadays, though. At least enough that I won’t have to get blackout drunk when things don’t go as planned.”
“That’s good.” Tsukishima unfurls the net and gives the free end to Tenma to take to the opposite post. “But your idealism was pretty cool too.”
The practiced actions of setting up the net return to Tenma’s hands bit by bit. He crosses the court, raising the net following Tsukishima’s movements, and secures the top cable around its proper hook.
Tenma says, “I think you should save words like ‘cool’ for people like Kei-kun."
“Nah, Kei’s not cool, he just hides how awkward he is by pretending to be all aloof.”
“Well, still, I don’t consider myself ‘cool’ at any point of my life, especially not as a teenager.”
“Really?” Tsukishima ratchets the net taut. “Don’t you have any memories of being here that you’re proud of?”
Tenma makes a considering sound. “I mean, there are a few."
“For me, standing in this gym as an adult just fills me with regrets." Tsukishima continues his task without interruption, even as Tenma pauses to watch him from the other end of the court. “It makes me remember all the times during high school when I hesitated, or chickened out, or failed, or lied to make things easier… and I wish I could’ve been more open and reckless, like you were.” Tsukishima gives the post a solid pat. “You were so cool. When I remember you, I think, that’s what youth is supposed to be for. ”
Tenma will never understand Tsukishima's baseless faith in him, nor will he ever understand how little regard Tsukishima holds for himself. He wonders if he makes a character like Tsukishima—generous without reason, diligently in love with volleyball even when there is no assurance that the sport will love him back, kind both despite his shortcomings and because of them—if Tsukishima will turn some of the admiration he's always lavished upon Tenma back toward himself.
And even if he won't, Tenma thinks it would be nice to celebrate good senpais like Tsukishima and Hanamoto and Kubo in his manga. Tsukishima deserves to be appreciated, even all these years later. Tenma will have to ask Akaashi what he thinks about it next week.
He calls across net, “You always speak too highly of me, Tsukishima-san. I'm pretty sure you're the cooler one."
Tsukishima laughs and concedes, “I guess we must have different definitions of the word.”
Tenma's muscle memory fails him when he tries to secure the bottom cable. He holds the net lock over his head in surrender, and Tsukishima, his ever-reliable senpai, trots over to help.
“I’ll make all the characters in my manga such reckless idiots that they won’t end up with regrets, then,” Tenma says as he watches Tsukishima’s hands perform some complex ritual of metal clips and loops and knots.
Tsukishima smiles, eyes cast downward toward his work. “Yeah, when I’m reading manga these days, I always find myself rooting for the kids who’re making the most of their youth.”
“C’mon, don’t talk like that, we aren’t even thirty. We’re still young enough to be reckless yet.”
“Udai, if you challenged Karasuno’s volleyball club to a match, you’d probably bust your knee.”
“That’s because I’m out of shape, not because I’m old,” Tenma gasps, indignant, and Tsukishima tilts his head to the side to laugh again, loud enough that it echoes against the walls.
His hair catches one of the familiar rectangles of winter sunlight cast from the gymnasium’s high windows and goes gold among the floating dust motes—and suddenly, Tenma finds himself remembering how third-year Tsukishima had taken the color with him without even saying goodbye, and how second-year Tenma had been so, so sure that seeing a scene like this again would be impossible; how he had swallowed down his heartbreak by telling himself that endings were inevitable, that it would be foolish to resist; how in reality Tsukishima would return to him years later just by coincidence, and volleyball would return to him just by a casual conversation with his editor, and how Karasuno would return to him just by a two-hour train ride and a phone call; how life is sometimes decisive, poetic, rewarding leaps forward, but mostly just keeps going—
And, without knowing why, just certain that he should, Tenma reaches out and wraps his hand around Tsukishima’s along the net’s bottom cable.
Tsukishima freezes. The muscles of his neck and jaw tighten almost imperceptibly.
“What?” Tsukishima asks as he turns to look at Tenma, still smiling and casual. Tenma’s thumb settles under the bony protuberance of Tsukishima’s wrist. He feels the pulse in the hollow there quicken; the tips of Tsukishima’s ears are pink, vivid against the blond of his hair, which might be from the cold but also might not be.
How long has it been?, Tenma wonders. Since they’d ran into each other at Kei’s first Spring Nationals? Or since Tenma, not yet the Little Giant, had boldly promised Tsukishima that he’d take Karasuno to Nationals for him? Perhaps it had been since that very first moment when the world went marigold yellow, and Tenma had looked up in the midst of dying to find Tsukishima smiling down at him with a water bottle.
He thinks it was probably since then.
He continues to study Tsukishima as he calculates trajectories and gravitational acceleration. Tsukishima has fifteen whole centimeters on Tenma and has been playing volleyball for all the years Tenma has been curled over desks, lifting nothing heavier than volumes of Shonen Vie—yet, Tsukishima doesn’t pull away.
“It’s too cold for water bottles,” Tenma says, “But I’ll buy you tea from the vending machine outside Sakanoshita Market.”
“What?” Tsukishima repeats, bewildered. Tenma knows that Tsukishima is the type to hold in his troubles rather than let anyone see them, but he can’t hide the jolt of his heartbeat beneath Tenma’s fingers.
If it was since that first moment, Tenma thinks, then this run-up has been more than ten years in the making. Ten years is far longer than any lead-in he’s had before. How high could he jump, with such an extensive, steady approach?
Gravity is a law, not a tendency, but Tenma has never tested the upper limits of flight.
If he aims high enough, perhaps the ascent will be infinite.
If not—well, he’s always been good at finding new ways to jump back up again.
“I think I threw my second button in the storage room because you’d already graduated, and that was the next closest thing I could think of,” Tenma says, peeking over his shoulder at the open closet door and wondering if there is even an infinitesimal chance that the button might still be in there for him to retrieve. He straightens to fix his gaze on Tsukishima. “How long have you liked me, Tsukishima-san?”
“Since—what?” Tsukishima repeats for an anguished third time, going the splotchy red he turns when Tanaka coaxes him into drinking sake. Tenma almost begins to laugh; then Tsukishima scowls at him, and his expression looks so much like his brother’s that Tenma does begin to laugh.
“You’re a menace, Udai,” Tsukishima sighs and screws his eyes shut. Tenma knows there’s no real heat behind it.
It feels like that morning before his first day of university when Shonen Vie had fallen open across his lap and Tenma had thought, Oh, of course, it was always this: the same trepidation; the same bubbling, thrilling hope; the same certainty that he’s meant for this, even if he does not have much experience and will have start from the ground once more.
This is fine, Tenma thinks, planting both feet firmly onto the ground. He’s grateful that the wooden floors of Karasuno’s gym have always provided him good lift for his leaps. I'm used to being the underdog. I’m sure it will be worth it.
Tenma rises up to meet him, and feels a swoop in his chest, helium-light and endless.
He can’t imagine that this is the sort of height he’s ever meant to fall from.