Archive of Our Own

“The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you.

Desolation tries to colonize you.”

– Annihilation, Jeff Vandermeer, 2014 –

– 𖤓 –

There is no blood.

This is the first thing Kageyama takes note of while his brain fights through the muggy heat to comprehend what he’s seeing. Summer is an orchestra of cicada-cries and the wailing siren of an ambulance that had just recently stopped, leaving an after-echo of the wretched sound.

Hinata sits on the open back of the vehicle, legs swinging lazily off the edge, a blanket that looks more paper than fabric wrapped around his small frame. The glare of daylight illuminates him too brightly.

There is no blood. Kageyama reminds himself of this; there is no blood, so he could not be injured. His own legs go numb to the bone, heavy, useless, his body a lumbering thing of awkward limbs and hesitation that glues him to the floor.

So they’d found him. Four days of radio silence, of missing posters, of panicked phone calls, and they’d found him, still in the clothes he’d last been sighted in. Kageyama couldn’t feel relief just yet, not for as long as there were ambulances parked by the school gates. When he manages that first step forward, an electric reaction takes place inside him. One hesitant half-step snowballs into a stumble, then a jog, then a full sprint as he runs to where Hinata is, caution and protocol thrown to the wind. None of it mattered. Not when they’d finally found him.

His arms itch to tackle him but the rest of him refrains, leaving him awkwardly poised and panting while Hinata stares up with-

Split second rainbow-refraction. Something fluorescent flickers in his wide, dazed eyes. Kageyama blinks the colors away. Tears?

Mind tricks. My brain’s playing tricks on me.

“W-“ he begins, the letters forming awkwardly in his mouth. “W-where were you?”

Hinata blinks, absent from himself. The look he has reflects this; he seems lost in a daydream more than frightened or panicked.

“Lake,” he slowly answers. “Or a river, maybe. I don’t remember.”

Instant anxiety courses through every fiber of Kageyama’s being.

He doesn’t remember? Does he have memory loss? Did he hit his head? Wait- a lake? What lake? The river? Why was he near the river? Was he lost? Was it intentional? Was he trying to- no, he wouldn’t. Even if he would, he wouldn’t pick such a convoluted way to go. Would he?

A paramedic says some jumble of words to him, something about waiting and giving space and other useless things that Kageyama can’t be bothered with. He places his hands on Hinata’s shoulders, feeling the blanket crinkle under his touch.

“Why the hell were you there in the first place?!” He shouts, exasperated. The nearest body of water big enough for Hinata to get stuck in is an hour’s bike away. Did he mean the streams by the mountain? Had he fallen off the bike, somehow?

A gloved hand nearly slaps Kageyama’s own away, but Hinata’s gaze doesn’t falter. He shrugs.

“I wanted to see it,” he explains. Kageyama backs away, the paramedic becoming a blur of white and blue too vivid to ignore. The background rambling sharpens into an annoyed tone:

“You can ask your friend for details later. Please, give him some space. He’s probably still in shock.”

And just like that, Hinata dissolves in a crowd of people; paramedics, police, faculty, other faceless grown-ups that think themselves a more worthy interruption than Kageyama. It makes him curl his fingers into a fist with irritation- he could’ve been afforded another minute to talk, another second.

Four days. Hinata had been by the lake, or the river, for four days. While Kageyama had been losing sleep, consulting his teammates, asking door-to-door and carrying hastily put-together posters, Hinata had been by the lake. Or the river. He didn’t know. He didn’t bleed.

So he waits, relenting to sit on a nearby bench. For adults who’d emphasized giving Hinata his precious space, they crowded about him like scavengers, picking off every bit of whatever rotten alibi he could offer. Some glance back at Kageyama with the slightest traces of guilt or disapproval, a wordless “Go home, kid. Don’t you have anything better to do?”

Kageyama hopes they can hear every bit of the “no” that he’s shoved into his scowl.

Daytime turns to noon, noon verging precariously on sundown. Kageyama hadn’t bothered going back to class. He’d never skipped, or at least, if he had, he didn’t remember it. He’d never intended to waste away the day waiting either, but the time trapped him like molasses- ever slow moving, but refusing to let him put his attention elsewhere. A few missed classes were nothing in the face of Hinata’s disappearance, and subsequent reappearance.

Finally, finally, Hinata stands up. Kageyama watches another paramedic scurry over to him from a distance as they exchange words he can’t hear before Hinata passes off the blanket to her. Refusing to continue their conversation, he makes a beeline for where Kageyama’s sitting. As he moves closer, Kageyama confirms his initial suspicion- Hinata’s eyes are locked solely on his. Silence passes between them.

Hinata is smiling.

“Sorry for the wait,” he offers, calmer than Kageyama could’ve ever anticipated. “You know how adults are. Protocols or whatever.”

Kageyama nods dumbly, studying Hinata’s expression. It fits the situation so sorely but matches his demeanor perfectly, an ideal actor placed on a collapsing stage. Right and wrong. Right- Hinata would smile after it was all over, find something to be giddy about. He was probably just happy to be found. Wrong- he’d just been through god-knows-what for four days with no contact, food, or water. There is nothing to smile about.

“Is something wrong?” Hinata asks, tilting his head like a curious songbird. Kageyama nearly chokes on air.

“Yes something’s wrong!” he shouts, then quieter after seeing a few of the adults have snapped their attention around in their direction. “You’ve been gone for four days and now you just- show up?! And act like nothing happened?! What were you even doing for four days? Why didn’t you call me back, or the team, or your mother? What the hell happened?!”

Hinata’s eyes widen, taken aback by Kageyama’s burst of emotion. Then, his smile stretches a bit farther.

“Yamayama, I didn’t know you cared so much,” Hinata teases, a sort of fascination taking a hold of his syllables.

“Of course I care!”

The setter shouts the words with such intensity that they leave him shaking, nearly short of breath. He runs a stressed hand through his hair, the irony of it all not lost on him: he’s somehow more distressed than the one who’s just now recovered from being disappeared into thin air.

“Look- just- just tell me what happened, just- start from the beginning, or- wherever you want to. I just need to know.”

Hinata’s smile disappears. Kageyama feels the warmth dissipate from Hinata’s expression, leaving nothing but a chill that runs up every one of his vertebrae. He’s never seen Hinata so cold in the features. Not even at his most intense.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Hinata says flatly.

Kageyama feels the tension inside him be strung even tighter around his chest like a garrote wire over a hatchet. He’s not sure he can breathe. Hinata’s eyes are still wide open, as if he’s trying to take in everything at once, as if he’s afraid to blink. Kageyama wishes he would. Just once.

Seconds pass in dead silence. No blink. Kageyama watches even closer, feels himself instinctively lean the slightest bit away-

There. A blink. Hinata begins to smile again.

“Don’t look so worried, Yamayama. I’m not hurt.”

He hates that it does bring him some relief, even if he’d observed as much himself. There was always the lingering anxiety of an internal injury, of trauma or shock, of disease or broken bones that did not announce themselves with blood, choosing sneakier ways to mar his body. Kageyama’s shoulders drop as the tension melts away.

“Did the lake-river make you forget my name or something?” he asks, a genuine question wearing the skin of a jab or a taunt. It’s quieter than his usual provocations. Hinata chuckles dryly, and sits himself beside his friend.

“Nope! Your name is Kageyama Tobio, you’re a setter, you drink milk a lot, and you’ve got a really sour attitude!” Hinata announces. There’s pride in his words, as if he’s demonstrating the correct answer to the teacher’s question in front of the class. Kageyama’s face wrinkles with annoyance.

“There! Right there! See? You’re frowning! I didn’t forget a single thing!”

Kageyama feels the urge to thread his fingers through Hinata’s ginger hair and shake him silly, but calms his temper enough to stop at a simple pat on the head. Hinata doesn’t flinch.

“Then knock it off with the nickname,” Kageyama grumbles. “Or I’ll tell those paramedics that you’ve got amnesia.”

“Don’t,” Hinata snaps, a bit too seriously. Guilt races through Kageyama’s system. Did I go too far? Did the paramedics bother him? I still don’t know what he’s been through- did I taunt him too casually?

“There’s nothing wrong with my memory.”

He sounds on the verge of tears when he says it now, eager to prove, eager to please. Kageyama nods along, taking his hand off of Hinata’s head. To his surprise, Hinata seizes his wrist and moves it back on.

“I told you, everything’s fine. I’m not hurt, so stop freaking out.”

“Right, okay. Sorry,” Kageyama mumbles. It’s only after the words leave him that the thought crashes into him, that his breath hitches in his throat when he notices:

Hinata’s hair is, and had always been, perfectly dry.

– ☾ –

Kageyama watches Hinata like a hawk nowadays, and Hinata makes it frustratingly easy for him.

Since his stint of going missing, he clings to Kageyama’s side like a parasite- always talking with him, walking with him, poking fun and making jokes as if he hadn’t spawned a giant pit of tar-like anxiety right in the middle of Kageyama’s stomach. The team had been eager to reunite with him as well, Nishinoya in particular was impatient to hear about whatever epic survival story his underclassman had to offer, but Hinata remained silent then, too. He simply repeated what he’d told Kageyama on that day:

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

It was the curiosity-killer, that phrase, an instant end-all be-all to any wonderings and musings.

What keeps Kageyama so on edge is not Hinata’s aversion to the topic. No, what bothers him so deeply is something else entirely:

Why did you lie?

Perhaps he’d told two different stories: one for the paramedics and one for Kageyama. Perhaps, in his disorientation, he’d gotten his situation mixed up. Perhaps Kageyama was overthinking all of this, finding holes in a story that barely even existed, finding reasons to be so worried that he could barely get food down anymore. Regardless, Kageyama knew it as clear as day-

Hinata had been completely dry when they found him.

He thinks back to the feeling of the blanket under his palm when he’d shaken his shoulder. More paper than fabric. Surely, an emergency blanket they had stored on ambulances in the event of needing to warm someone up, or a simple courtesy comfort for the victim, like a cup of water from the hospital. To produce so many meant a cheaper material. A dryer material. A material that had been dry when Kageyama held it.

His hair, too- as soft and wild as ever, slightly fluffy, bright and rich in color. Not damp. Not even the slightest bit damp.

Hinata should have been soaking, been absolutely drenched from head to toe. Not only did he not bleed- he had no traces of lake or river contact on him to speak of. No scuffing. No dirt. No mud.

It doesn’t take long for Hinata to notice Kageyama staring at him. He speaks between mouthfuls of a lunch he insisted they share together, though, his appetite had been diminishing as of late.

“Yamayama, you’re frowning at me again. If you keep making ugly faces you’re gonna get all wrinkly before you’re old,” Hinata warns, waving his chopsticks to emphasize the point. Kageyama breaks eye contact all too eagerly.

I could ask him. I could. It’s been a few days and he’s already back in school, so, that means they didn’t find anything wrong with him. But would he answer me honestly? Would he be upset again?

A sharp poke disrupts his focus. Hinata jabs into Kageyama’s shoulder with his other hand.

“Oi, are you even listening? You’ll get wrinkles!”

“Everyone gets wrinkles, dumbass! Now let me think,” Kageyama waves him aside as though he were a particularly determined fly.

Hinata sets his lunch down, craning his head to try and get a better look at Kageyama’s stern expression.

“What are you thinking about?” Hinata asks. Kageyama can almost feel the anticipation seep through his letters. Genuine curiosity.

He’s asking, isn’t he? So I should confront him. Say it outright. Right now.

“Hinata, when you-“

Kageyama stops. The sentence feels off, the timing, the tone. He clears his throat and tries again.

“Why did you lie about what happened to you?”

Nothing but cicadas answer him. Despite the sweltering summer heat, Hinata asked to have their lunches outside, just by the gym. Kageyama can’t see anyone in his peripheral vision. They’re alone.

Hinata puts his chopsticks to rest, too, abandoning them with his lunch. He stares at Kageyama with an unwelcome intensity.

“What are you talking about? I didn’t lie,” he breathes. Soft, uncertain. Convincing himself more than anyone- but then, he’s convincing. Therefore;

“Yes, you did. You said you were near water, but your blanket was dry. So was your hair. If they just fished you out, you would’ve been soaked. Your hair should’ve at least been messed up or tangled, or you would’ve had mud on your shoes.”

Hinata goes silent for a long while. Contagious silence. Devastating silence.

He turns back to meet Kageyama’s eyes. Fluorescence again. Swirling around his pupils like water in a dish, spitting light back out rather than taking it in. Kageyama recoils on instinct.

“You shouldn’t have noticed. The grown-ups didn’t notice,” Hinata murmurs to himself, his voice quivering, his hands beginning to follow suit. Kageyama watches them carefully.

“I didn’t mean to catch him, y’know? It just happened. What you people call an accident. He was just so- bright, we like bright things, and I was so-“

Kageyama flinches as Hinata reaches for him. His eyes are familiar now. Kageyama’s seen a look like that before- that of animals caught in photographs, of deers in headlights and cats under the glare of polaroids.

“S-stop, you’re freaking me out!” Kageyama spits out. Whether this was a prank or a cruel joke, he wanted no part in it, not of Hinata’s cryptic murmurings or his animal eyes. Hinata grabs his wrist, uncaring, squeezes it with enough strength to bruise. Kageyama winces under his grasp.

“I really tried my best! I did all the right things, said all the things he would say- it’s not fair! H-how was I supposed to know that he wasn’t supposed to be dry? I made him normal, didn’t I? I was perfect, wasn’t I?”

Kageyama feels sick to his stomach.

That’s not Hinata. It’s not Hinata. It’s not. It looks like him and it sounds like him and it’s not Hinata.

Even the stutter is imitation- Hinata hadn’t stuttered since he was found, not once, hadn’t been hesitant or had his breath hitch. Only after Kageyama struggled with his own words, did “Hinata” learn how to mimic it.

“Let go of me!” Kageyama snaps, wrenching himself free with a sudden jerk of his arm and spilling his lunch all over the concrete and grass as a result.

When he looks down again, Hinata’s fingers are what he can only understand as broken. They twitch and crackle like the legs of insects, snapping and writhing, extending as he pulls at his own skin and digging into his scalp. Kageyama watches, his throat dry as cotton and his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth as Hinata peels beneath his eye, revealing the layers of twisting and writhing muscle beneath.

Iridescent. Just like the eyes.

Kageyama can’t speak. His mouth gapes open and closed- that’s it then! I’m crazy! Officially lost my mind- because this isn’t real, this can’t be real, it’s not real it’s not real it’s not-

“Hinata” emits a small, hoarse, shaky sound from somewhere deep in his throat. The rest of him is perfectly still, his first three fingers still sinking into his skin like clay and peeling it aside, motionless, paralyzed- yet, the sound is undeniably that of a sob trapped behind his flesh.

Is he…crying?

There are no tears. The ravine torn by the nail in his cheek reveals no blood. “Hinata” hides his face away, ducks his head down to the floor and shrinks into himself. His broken pinky taps at the side of his head in a maddening rhythm.

“I did everything right,” he weeps. “but you still look at me like that- like you know, it just doesn’t make sense! I did everything exactly like how I saw…you believed me, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

Kageyama feels his pulse go cold. When “Hinata” glances back at him, he’s gone back to normal. No gouge in his face. No broken, purple, insect-like twitchy fingers. No creaking of bones. No iridescent muscle.

Just Hinata. Teary-eyed, his stressed hands ruining his fluffy hair. Waiting for an answer.

“What-“

“Hinata” leans in closer, nearly falling forwards from the anticipation.

“What are you?” Kageyama whispers.

Suddenly there are mere centimeters between them, the stranger’s nose nearly colliding with Kageyama’s. Its tears continue to swell, but never fall.

“I’m Hinata,” it squeaks out. “I’m Hinata. I’m Hinata?”

Convincing himself.

“Y-you’re not-“

“I, I’m Hinata. I’m very good at that. Right? You think so too, right?”

Kageyama bites the inside of his lip, holding in his breath. The stranger’s breath is cold on his skin, reeking of candy gone rotten, like the fruit inside’s been abandoned in the summer heat. Decaying honey. He pushes against the stranger’s chest to try and build distance, but it only advances. It grabs Kageyama by the hands. Gentler, this time.

“Don’t you think so?”

He might die right there, Kageyama realizes- his heart has been pounding for an eternity and his body can’t keep up. The words swim around his brain, what they could possibly mean, what in the world the thing with Hinata’s face is trying to say. He could die of a heart attack before it ever says anything else. It wouldn’t surprise him.

The reason why he does so will haunt him for the rest of his life. Still, inexplicably, unpredictably:

Kageyama nods.

It had fooled him. At least for a little bit- at least while he was just glad Hinata was alive, the relief drowning out any other higher thinking. He hadn’t realized it then. Only had a suspicion.

He’s freed. The thing with Hinata’s face beams up at him, a smile pearly enough to blind, a grin too pitch-perfect for everything that had just happened. This wasn’t Hinata. It wasn’t. So why did it smile so perfectly? Why did it have that childish, carefree, overwhelming charm? What had it done? What-

“W-what did you do to him?” Kageyama accuses. Now, it looks dejected, casting its gaze away. If it hadn’t turned away so fast, Kageyama could’ve mistaken the look for grief. No, it couldn’t have been that he’s injured or gone. It couldn’t. This must truly be Hinata, making a stupid joke, trying to freak him out. It must be.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“I don’t care! Are you messing with me? Is this your idea of a prank?”

Another tilt. Curious, taking it all in.

“What’s a prank?”

“Hinata I’m serious, if this is just you trying to be funny or whatever, stop- just stop!”

The wet sounds of flesh and tissue fill the air again. Lines slash down Hinata’s face, splitting his features into segments with red cuts into the skin. Something shiny and glossy like oil splatters onto the concrete beneath him in place of where tears would be. This is real. Please look. Don’t turn away.

Kageyama gives it no time to talk. He reaches out- if this was a prank, a mask or a hallucination or whatever the hell it was, he’d rip it right off. His wounds tingle to the touch, bleeding more of the oil, his skin pliant like mud. Cold. Too cold. It’s real skin all the same.

“Hinata” doesn’t flinch, not even as Kageyama thumbs under his skin. The muscle beneath is wet, slippery like fish-skin and just as refractive. Kageyama snaps his hands away as if he’d been burned by the contact.

It gurgles a bit before speaking, choking. When it clears its throat, “Hinata’s” voice rings out again, pure as day.

“I didn’t mean to do anything to him,” it begins, defensive. Offended, even. Kageyama second guesses if provoking it had been wise.

“He just- fell in. So very bright. We like bright things, so I took him.”

The cicadas cry louder than ever as Kageyama’s ears ring.

Took him? Was he kidnapped? Stolen? No- then how does it look just like him? Why are there no scars where it split open? Is it wearing his skin? How can it copy his voice?

“I-I don’t understand,” Kageyama offers, meekly. Like an exasperated child, “Hinata” looks around for something to better explain, waving its hands about. A mass of purplish-red pokes out from where its skin’s been split like the rind of a fruit, lacey, gelatinous, frilled with impatience.

“Like- this, right?”

It directs Kageyama’s attention to his lunch, spilled and useless.

“You don’t always mean to have it, right? Sometimes you just eat without realizing. Eat. Eat?”

The word catches awkwardly on its tongue, and it repeats it a few times. Learning. Adapting.

It…ate him?

“Y-“

The bell screams over them both.

Lunch is over. Footsteps begin to click-clack through the hallways in a steady rhythm. Life goes on. People flood in. The heat melts Kageyama’s brain, making him feel outside of himself. Nothing seems real.

As if embarrassed, or caught doing something it shouldn’t have been doing, the thing with Hinata’s face patches itself back up. Unblemished. Completely normal. Even his eyes have lost their fluorescent qualities, back to the warm hazel Kageyama had gotten used to.

“You’re supposed to be my friend, right?” It asks.

Kageyama nods. Tears prickle at his eyes.

“Then, please stop noticing. I don’t want other people to look.”

Don’t tell anyone.

He translates the creature’s vague phrases. Clearly, it shares Hinata’s lack of vocabulary, probably knowing even less than Hinata did. It doesn’t want anyone to know that it isn’t really Hinata. Maybe it killed him. Maybe it ate him. It’s pretending.

“…okay.”

Then, again, more assured this time. Kageyama couldn’t have other people trying to find out answers, tearing Hinata away from him again. Losing him in the crowd. Teaching him- teaching it- the wrong things. If keeping the creature’s secret meant knowing more, then-

“Okay. I won’t tell.”

– 𖤓 –

A duplicate. A double. Shape-shifter. Doppelgänger.

Kageyama sifts through forum after forum, hunched over his computer at an ungodly hour. There had to be answers, something more than just labels. There had to be.

Hinata- no, not Hinata. Whatever was perfectly imitating Hinata had clearly done some extensive research, because his plays had been perfectly in sync. Even better than usual, Kageyama would argue. Practice had everyone excited and energized. Lively. Unaware. Hinata fit right back into the team as if nothing had happened, nothing at all.

“Why don’t they notice anything?”

The setter considered every known possibility, made hypothesis after hypothesis to ground his failing sanity: he was dreaming, or he had hit his head at practice and this was some sort of coma, or Hinata was somehow playing a reality-breaking prank on him and the others were all in on it, or Hinata was dead and something had replaced him.

Hinata was dead. Something had replaced him.

Kageyama shakes his head- he won’t believe it, refuses to believe it. Yet in some part, to disbelieve it meant to believe it in the first place, to ignore something was the same as acknowledging its existence. The image of Hinata with his face splitting apart hadn’t quite left him- losing sleep wasn’t an issue with nightmares like that.

A particular article catches his attention, the link blue and unclicked.

“Reported Double Sightings on The Rise around Sendai: What To Look Out For.”

It’s not a particularly trustworthy website, not a public service announcement or hailing from a broadcast channel. The link leads to a simple blog post, gray-bordered, a page of pure text.

It begins with a date. February 16th, 2007. Not recent, and unreliable. He’s about to click off, but offers it a brief skim when he catches the top of a photo further down the page. There are two, one in perfect clarity, and one in motion. An elderly woman stares into the camera holding up some bundle of weeds, perhaps in the midst of gardening.

Her eyes gleam like that of a deer at dusk.

Kageyama reads the rest of the page without stopping; how this person, too, had lost someone dear to them for the span of two weeks. Upon her miraculous reappearance, there were no traces of any injuries or trauma to be spoken of. Only mild disorientation. Then the eyes had been noticed, and the poster, her son, had insisted she be taken to the hospital. She refused. Only when disturbed, and accused of replacing the original, did the double reveal itself: splitting into fragments to display a fragile substance underneath, just like Hinata had.

There are three more narratives that follow the pattern, all from different dates. The 2007 one was the most recent. The very bottom of the page offers a distinct segment highlighted in dark blue text. The header reads:

“Common Characteristics of A Double: Be Aware”

He skims the list.

• Eyeshine, or otherwise reflective eyes.
• Memory loss, or an inability to recall their creation-event
• Confusion over common terms or phrases
• Fixation over one or more persons
• Avoidance to well populated or busy areas, such as offices, schools, hospitals, or shopping districts
• Distress, rather than denial, when asked about being a double
• Stay safe!

He scrolls further. The page recoils, there’s nothing more to be read.

“That’s it? Seriously?”

There’s no comment on if they’re really real, on if it’s a hoax, if it’s an animal, an experiment, an urban legend, a ghost. Nothing. Only that they exist, according to these three unfortunate accounts, and that there are no known ways to dispel them. Only ways to distress them.

He clicks through a few more links, skims page after page, but eventually relents. If there were any record on how to prevent a double from taking the original’s place, then they’d long since been deleted or barred behind untrustworthy browsers.

The clock reads 02:37 AM. He returns to the Sendai article and waits patiently for the page with the photographs to print. How would the double react to a photograph of another? Was the photograph even real? Would it be upset again?

“This is insane.”

The setter collapses back onto his bed, the paper copy still warm in his hand and the ceiling blanker than ever. If he thinks about it for too long, he finds that a nasty ball of muddled emotions rises in his chest, pushing the air out of him. It’s burning hot like anger but absent of all action, stinging, aching, making his eyes water. He’s not sure why he’s so scared.

He hadn’t even gotten to know Hinata that well, not really. They didn’t have to know each other well. There was the matched obsession with volleyball, that was really all they needed. A shared drive. A rivalry. Someone who could keep up with the other’s thirst for improvement. Both a sense of companionship and the blatant realization that they couldn’t stand each other at times. Would he ever really know him now?

The realization that the original Hinata, if he could even call him that, was still missing somewhere, gone, taken, as the impostor had put it- it made his heart sink into his stomach. His family didn’t know that their son hadn’t ever made it back to them. His teammates didn’t know that life went on as if he’d never gone missing, because to them, he hadn’t. It was a distant memory, a bad scare, a funny little accident to tell stories of at parties and reunions.

Kageyama tries to picture his fear. The world-stopping revelation that this was it: he would die here, at this lake, or river, if he had even been there to begin with. Alone.

It makes him sick.

The creature moved just like Hinata, too, down to the finest detail, the tiniest habit. How he’d always hesitate before serving, the way he’d clumsily fall on his face when doing a seal dive, the way he’d jump up and beam with excitement over every scored point. So damn enthusiastic. It’s enough to fool him, at times. Tempt him.

And it is tempting, Kageyama spurns to admit. It would be so easy for him to give up making distinctions, to let go, to pretend he never realized Hinata’s blanket was dry and give the double what it wanted. It seemed the double wanted that, too. It would be easy to pretend that Hinata is still here, perfectly fine, that he’d gotten lost on his stupid bike and been found and been completely okay. They’d practice together, improve, thrive, and stand at the top. They’d continue to race each other, and argue, and grow stronger, all the way to Nationals.

Still. He can’t forget the sound Hinata’s face had made when it cracked open, wet and squelching like rotten fruit, leaking god-knows-what onto the pavement and siphoning it back in again.

In dreams, he replays the sound over and over. The splitting doesn’t stop at Hinata’s face, then, distorted by the heat waves and the smell of a clear sky. Like a flower blooming, or clay being pushed through a sieve, what can be recognized as “Hinata” falls apart in barely held-together syrupy segments, the web of muscle and flesh and fluorescence beneath wriggling together into an approximation of a human being. It’s like every muscle is alive. Writhing. Reaching, towards him, around his neck-

Kageyama jolts awake.

The article is crumpled in his fist, and sunlight bleeds through his window. He hates the paper curled against his fingers, hates the beeping of his computer that reminds him how he’s forgotten to shut it off properly, hates the sunlight that makes it hard to open his tired, bloodshot eyes. If what had happened yesterday had been a part of his dream too, he wouldn’t have had the stupid article. Of course his nightmares only extended far enough to be uncomfortable, not deeper into his reality so that he could rest assured that it was all a bad dream, that Hinata was actually fine. In another life, perhaps, it would all have been a product of the mind, and Kageyama would have woken up empty-handed and well rested.

Not in this lifetime.

He runs a stressed hand through his hair, grumbling as he drags himself out of bed. School feels hostile now, unfitting, and he knows that the double feels it, too. The double feels more than he ever wishes it could. Like a prism, reflecting and refracting his own emotions, constantly studying, constantly sampling the world around it and spinning that into a more complete version of “Hinata.” Hindsight haunts him in this way: how the double had learned to stutter only after he had done it, how it blinked only because Kageyama had begun to instinctively pull away. A manual command. Unnatural, not innate- because of course it wouldn’t be innate to a double, the urge to always blink.

Unlike Hinata, the double was a quick study.

Kageyama sees it lingering by the gates of the school, bright and bubbly, waving ludicrously to him as if they’d been separated for months. To Kageyama’s sluggish and sleep-deprived surprise, the double stops waving once it realizes Kageyama’s seen him, then turns on a heel. It’s gone. Just like that, it dashes off towards the gymnasium. He hears the distant, echoing cry to action:

“Race you!”

Teeth grit together hard enough to shatter. Kageyama feels the article crinkle even more against his nails, nearly tearing at the punctures.

Stop. Stop trying to be him. Stop making things seem so normal. Please.

Fresh anger, red-hot and roiling beneath his skin, urges Kageyama to chase after it. Losing to Hinata had been one thing, losing to the image of Hinata was another. He wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of Hinata’s joy- not this thing, not the creature that had done nothing to earn it, that had stolen a life.

“I wi-”

Kageyama tackles it to the ground, slamming it head-first into the concrete. He gasps and pants for air after it had taken an unfair head-start, a bittersweet blend of anguish and hatred swimming in his eyes. There’s a loud crack as the creature’s head collides with the floor. It doesn’t move.

“Shut up!” Kageyama shouts. The words tumble out of him before he can stop himself.

“Shut up- shut up! Don’t use his voice like that! Don’t act like you’re a human being!”

His shouting catches the attention of one or two passers-by. Kageyama can’t find it in him to care, even as they whisper between themselves, even as they debate getting faculty involved. The double fights back rather weakly. Small hands push back against the setter’s weight, keeping some distance between them. The same slick oily substance retreats into a hidden wound in the back of Hinata’s head, obscured by his hair. Kageyama hates how it shimmers in the sun.

“But I am a human being?” it half-asks, half-laughs, as if Kageyama was the crazy one. Maybe he was. The slight condescension in its innocence is enough to make Kageyama slam it against the floor a second time. Its eyes are wide, confused, glimmering with amusement. Awkward and full of bewilderment. Perfectly Hinata-like in every way.

“You’re not!”

Tightness, a coil around his wrist. The double digs its nails into Kageyama’s skin, drawing blood.

“Not here, Yamayama. People will notice.”

The whisper is pleading, but Kageyama can’t hear it as anything but sinister. The nickname, the audacity to ask for him to set aside his grief for a more convenient moment, it’s enough to make Kageyama want to rip it apart right here and now. The warm liquid that oozes lazily from his wrist convinces him to restrain himself. The double was stronger than it let on, at least as strong as Hinata. He could rip it apart. It could rip him apart.

Kageyama catches his breath with an ugly gulp and gives the double a chance to escape from under him. It scrambles away, grinning, nudging the setter’s shoulder as if it’d all been a practical joke.

“You’re such a sore loser,” it taunts. The line between its impressions of Hinata and its genuine thoughts blur enough to make Kageyama dizzy.

“I didn’t…”

A pause. Even talking with it feels insulting. Like he’s entertaining it to begin with, accepting that Hinata was gone and this was all that was left. Talking to it gave it the satisfaction of being perceived, a way to say: Yes, you’re real, and you’re real enough for me to pretend that you’re a person, that I can treat you like one. I might even treat you like the original, if you keep up the act long enough.

“You didn’t…?” it asks, hungrily. Needing to hear more. Eager to impress.

Kageyama sighs.

“I didn’t lose.”

He admits defeat through the refusal of it. “Hinata” smiles.

“Did too,” it retorts. Kageyama offers no counter. There, sitting in disarray on the concrete once more, he smooths out the article he’d printed out and holds it up for the double to see.

Silence. “Hinata” studies the picture carefully. It tilts its head, lifts a perplexed brow.

“What’s this?” it asks. Kageyama’s mouth draws into an even thinner line, verging on a scowl.

“It’s you. Isn’t it?”

“Hinata” studies it a bit longer, then glances in some unknown direction to the left. Kageyama follows his gaze- but there’s nothing, only the relatively empty courtyard and the school beyond it. The passageway that connects the gym to its sister building barely offers any shade from the sun, making it hard for Kageyama to keep up. The double doesn’t seem to mind.

“If this is your idea of an insult, then it sucked. I’m not an old lady,” it jokes back, pitch-perfect. It shoves the paper back into Kageyama’s hands, dusting itself off as it stands up.

“Hin-”

It stares back at him, eyes gleaming, the beginnings of a grin immediately spreading over its features like the excitement of a cat to a bell. Pride, or satisfaction. Sickening satisfaction.

No. Not Hinata. I won’t call it that. Not yet.

“Yeah?”

“I’m not asking him. I’m asking you, if this is you. Drop the act.”

Its expression flips on its head, wrenches the smile into a frown, then a pout, then finally settling on a flat, neutral gaze. It did this often, Kageyama realized- struggled to decide what emotion to settle on, phasing through expressions like a constant chemical reaction. Every hair on Kageyama’s head bristles and stands up, goosebumps shooting through him like a current. Neutral expressions don’t fit Hinata, not with those features, not with his never-ending energy. Even at his most calm, Hinata always had a bit of enthusiasm, a bit of curiosity- surely, he spent even his idle moments thinking about the things he enjoyed.

The double did not. Cold, calculating, it looks left and right again.

“Not me. Someone else.”

The answer is infuriatingly curt, not giving Kageyama a letter more to work with. It hid as much of its own nature as possible, threw every ounce of energy into perfectly replicating Hinata rather than communicating with what knew its secret. Kageyama opens his mouth to threaten it but the creature is faster- snapping attention back until its eyes bore through the setter’s skull.

“I said not here. There’s people. Show me at lunch, or at practice, okay?”

Kageyama glances around. The passersby pair had already been on their way, and there was no one else to speak of. No faculty or early risers. Not even any of their teammates. Is it lying again?

“There’s nobody around,” Kageyama retorts. The double shakes its head.

“There’s people. I can hear them. Talking about…”

It goes quiet for a bit, eyes flickering in little micro-movements like the ears of a hare, picking up on an invisible frequency.

“Test today, and homework due tomorrow. Her friend borrowed a pencil and hasn’t given it back, and it was her favorite…really expensive, too. The one next to her is worried about school ending next week. The one next to-”

“Okay,” Kageyama hisses. “Okay, I believe you. Later, then.”

A smaller smile this time, humbler.

“‘Kay,” it agrees.

The day runs by like molasses, and the blur of bright ginger hair never quite leaves Kageyama’s peripheral vision. Deep inside, under the layers of feelings coated in a discomfort like tar, Kageyama regrets not ripping it all away when he had the chance.

– ☾ –

“Nice kill!”

Hinata’s voice rings out over the gym, one of many in a chorus of encouragement. Tanaka returns the enthusiasm with a hearty thumbs-up.

Kageyama’s wariness is not lost on his performance- the team has begun to notice. Paranoia dulls him, weighing down his movements and sinking his steps. His sets lack their usual precision. His bark and bite are both nowhere to be found. Like a cat hissing to an invisible threat, his hostility radiates into an aura he carries around him like a raincloud, a shield of sorts, something to protect him from Hinata’s perfect imitation. The water bottle in his hand sits idly against his palm- he hasn’t taken a single drink from it, despite sitting on the bench for nearly ten minutes.

“You okay?” Sugawara asks, disrupting Kageyama’s laser-focus on the wrong thing. Kageyama falters back into his feigned normalcy with an obvious clumsiness.

“Fine, I’m fine.”

Sugawara has a pitying smile, brows furrowed with a knowing sympathy.

“Right, sure. Well, if you ever wanna talk, your upperclassman’s here for you,” a gentle pat on the shoulder emphasizes his statement. Kageyama nods, already turning his attention back to Hinata. Sugawara lowers his voice and leans in.

“Did you guys get into a fight or something?” he ventures. Non-judgemental, curious all the same.

“No- uh, I mean, I guess so.”

Whatever answer would satisfy the asker and keep their curiosity fed was a sufficient enough response. Kageyama can barely spare half of his concentration to the current conversation. He watches Hinata swap his way onto the court, jumping up and down in anticipation. Has his jump always been that high?

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” Kageyama is quick to respond. “He won’t admit I beat him in a race.”

Sure, that’s believable. Sugawara would believe it, at least.

But he doesn’t, and he makes it obvious- there’s a little pause, then a long, falsely-surprised “hmm” that emanates from his senior, halfway to a knowing “ahh, I see,” like the acknowledgement given to children who insist on believing in the ridiculous. Something meant to placate, not to believe.

“Got it. Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Sugawara offers, shrugging and standing up to partake in the once-festivities. Kageyama gives him no more than a simple nod.

For a split-second, the double glances back at him. Even from all the way across the gym with scores of their teammates filing in and out of its line of sight, it makes one thing obvious:

It’s been watching Kageyama, too. Only when he’s not looking.

– 𖤓 –

“You should come to my house,” the double suggests, the same bicycle that Hinata had gone missing with click-click-clicking at its side. Kageyama nearly spits out his mouthful of a curry bun at the suggestion.

“Why the hell would I do that?”

"Hinata" kicks the back of his shoe in a playful manner, and it would’ve been enough for Kageyama to do it back, if only it were out of a true youthful mischief. Every copy of a gesture reads as a threat now, proof of how easy it was to take over what Hinata had been.

“So we can talk, you big dummy. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Before Kageyama can respond, Daichi interrupts their conversation.

“That might not be a good idea, Hinata. I think it’s better if Kageyama goes home and catches up on some sleep. You look exhausted.”

“No,” Kageyama protests. “I’m fine.”

Daichi sighs, but relents. He wasn’t often one to involve himself in the after-hours business of others, but Kageyama’s exhaustion had affected the team negatively- that, and that alone, was something difficult to ignore. The double beams up at the setter.

“So that’s a yes?”

Kageyama refuses to look at it when he nods. “Hinata” springs up into the air, nearly dropping his bike completely in the process.

“Yes! Hope you don’t mind the walk, though. It’s quicker when I bike, but it can’t fit two people.”

“I don’t think Kageyama would bike with you even if it could,” Nishinoya quips, ever quick to finish eating. His remark gets a chuckle out of the others, especially Tsukishima, and a sigh from the third-years.

The rest of the conversation blurs in and out for Kageyama, because he’s checked out long ago, from the moment Daichi walked out of the store. The double had done something unusual, then, finally revealing a disparity in its performance for the first time in front of the others: it turned down the food.

Why? Why would it copy everything else perfectly, but not eat? Did it not like the smell? Can it taste things? It ate before, didn’t it? At lunch- sure, it was slow, but it was eating. What if it gets hungry? Will it hurt me? Can it copy two people at once?

He doesn’t realize the group’s already said their goodbyes and split off into their own directions, his own words on autopilot, until a street lamp flickers above his head. Sundown has long since been over. Dusk, and all its warm, beautiful, summertime colors, is gone. Nightfall eats it up at the heel. The click-click-click starts up again.

The form of Hinata stands a few paces in front of him, dim and dark with the vanishing of the sun and shrouded in the growing shadows. The edges of his being are illuminated with light from the lamps, eerie, weak, a shade of yellow too artificial to be comforting. It turns back to Kageyama with a content smile.

It’s impossible to ignore the glare in its eyes. Red, then orange, then yellow, then every other color. Kageyama’s throat tightens enough to cut off his breathing, choking him up.

It’s showing off, at this point.

The setter reluctantly catches up with it. There’s something humiliating about it all, how it doesn’t even take the effort to pretend anymore as soon as the others are gone, how it keeps that maddeningly innocent expression as Kageyama follows it like a prisoner bound to the gallow, or a fish to a lure. Forced, by his very nature, to give in to the illusion.

They walk in silence. Kageyama watches it, it listens to Kageyama, not even needing to turn around to hear how his heart pounds against his chest and his lungs pulse irregularly. A part of him wishes it was smug and proud, loud and obvious- he wishes it would go up to him and say: I’m just like him, aren’t I? You know it too. Did you really think anyone else would catch on? Did you really think you’d win?

The innocent smile stings more than any other expression it could have ever chosen. He’d take a frown or a scowl, a pout, a grin, a laugh. Anything other than that peaceful, oh-so-happy-to-be-here look in its eyes, the look that says I’m having a great time, just like the real one would. I think he’d be happy to be here too.

“Left,” it instructs, turning sharply round a wooded corner. Night-insects do battle to make the loudest song, creating a cacophony of noise as wind rushes through the canopy of tree leaves overhead. A few sparse power lines interrupt the starry night sky. It’d be beautiful, if only his palms would stop sweating. If only Kageyama’s insides would stop twisting at the thought.

So it knows where he lives.

The house is smaller than he expected, much more traditional, too, lacking the modern elements that Kageyama had grown accustomed to. A worn down column of wood that’s half-hidden by the nearby shrubbery reads the family name. The bike emits a louder clack as the double lets down the kickstand, just outside the front of the house.

“Hinata” opens the sliding-door to the genkan, where there are two pairs of shoes already present.

“I’m home!” it shouts out, untying its sneakers and somewhat lazily ordering them next to the other two. Kageyama reluctantly follows suit.

“Shoyou, you’re late!” comes the response, a woman’s voice, no doubt his mother.

“Sorry! I brought a friend!”

I’m not your friend.

He means it when the thought crosses his mind, this time. It had crossed Kageyama’s mind before too, but even then he knew that on some level, he would consider Hinata something like a friend. Something different, too, closer. Someone that could understand and engage him, someone that would always spring up when nobody else had the stamina.

This was different.

The woman pokes her head out from the sitting-room a door down, her short dark hair framing the same soft features that Hinata had. Her eyes are wide, clearly caught off guard by the sudden visit, but warm and welcoming all the same.

“Oh! Welcome! Please, make yourself comfortable, and excuse the mess. We weren’t expecting guests.”

Kageyama nods, offering a barely-there “it’s fine” under his breath. Footsteps thunder down from around the corner and down the hall, small and quick, something light striking against the hardwood.

Ah, right. Hinata mentioned that he had a sister.

Natsu blinks at Kageyama, and Kageyama blinks back. Her wonder and curiosity translates to an unintentional isolation, the realization that Kageyama was not supposed to be here, and perhaps wasn’t even welcome to begin with. She points an almost accusatory finger at him.

“You’re tall!”

The setter can’t help but be amused by her own observation. It seems that fascination and enthusiasm ran in the family.

“And you’re, uh. Orange,” Kageyama stammers back, unsure of what to say. First impressions fit him about as well as a waterlogged bar of soap that slipped through his fingers. Natsu seems to think better of the remark, giggling at the awkwardness.

The family is warm, he realizes. Full of life and energy, sharing the traits that made him envy Hinata so much. An innate sense of compassion and enthusiasm, a sort of addictive charm that made it so easy for them to be friendly. His mouth had wavered on a smile, but- the recollection sank it into a frown.

They don’t even know. They’re not acting like they know. They’re not even afraid.

“Hinata” barely makes it three steps and two words into the hallway before Natsu tackles him, hanging off his waist like a clingy animal.

“You said you’d play jump-rope with me today! Now you and your friend should jump-rope with me! You promised!”

“Hinata” ruffles her hair, before firmly but carefully shaking the shorter off of it.

“I said maybe I’d jump-rope with you today, not that I promised I’d jump-rope with you today. Go watch T.V or something, okay?”

Natsu pouts, shaking it by the hem of its shirt. The double rolls its eyes, then raises its voice a few notches.

“Besides, we’ve got a lot of homework to do, both of us!”

“But-”

“Natsu, you heard him!” Hinata’s mother chimes in, her voice muffled by the tatami. “Give those two some time to study!”

Natsu kicks her heel against the floor, dejected, but obediently trots off all the same. The double gestures to Kageyama with an impatient beckoning of the hand. Wordlessly, Kageyama follows.

So you know how to manipulate, too.

Hinata’s room is somehow exactly what he expected it to be, only a few degrees more volleyball-crazed than his own. Posters decorate the space above his desk, lined with books and magazines on one side and small mementos on another, some from junior high, some from even before that. Opposite to the desk is his bed, the blanket made in a hurry, the curtains wide open to let in the starlight. An alarm clock. Some knick-knacks. A few comics in a shelf, nestled amidst his textbooks.

The double nonchalantly sits itself down on the side of the bed, having shed itself of its team jacket. The room is perfectly imperfect. Clearly, it had rifled through Hinata’s things, flipped through some of his books and searched through his clothes and other items, but just to the extent where it fit perfectly with his usual messiness. A calculated amount of being scatter-brained. It’s a violating thing, the setter thinks, to have one’s belongings shuffled through without permission, without the original there to stop it.

Kageyama stays standing, ever cautious, his back right up against the exit that “Hinata” had slid shut behind him. No lock. All Kageyama had to do was slide it back open, make some believable excuse, and leave.

Instead, he waits for the double to extend its hand, eagerly requesting something.

“The picture,” it elaborates. Kageyama fishes the article out for it.

It tilts its head as it scans the page, repeating those same careful micro-movements of the eye as it seemed to take in every pixel, every speck of color and stray blade of digitized grass. Kageyama’s palms itch with the urge to flee.

“Not me. We don’t recognize each other,” it answers. Then, a moment later, a chuckle creeps into its tone. Hinata’s chuckle, the one it’d taken from him.

“Were you searching for me?” it asks, as if flattered. Kageyama stiffly nods.

“My turn for questions,” he advances, towering over the sitting anomaly. It didn’t matter what it could impersonate or how well it could hear- Kageyama had to let it know he wouldn't be intimidated so easily, not by this cowardly thing. It stares up at him, unflinching, even when cast in his shadow.

“What did you do with Hinata?”

It raises a brow at the question, furrowing the other, tilting its head again to the opposite side this time.

“You asked me this already,” it complains. Kageyama grabs it by the shoulders, lowering his voice. He hopes it can taste every bit of venom he’s injected the letters with.

“Answer. Did you eat him? Hurt him? Kill him?”

It thinks deeply, staring into Kageyama with that same daydream-haze. Then, it shrugs.

“Accident. He fell in. He was too bright. I took him.”

Kageyama grows more impatient by the second and he shakes it like a ragdoll, conveying only a sliver of his frustration.

“What does that mean- too bright? You keep saying that, too bright, too bright. The hell do you mean by that?”

“Mm, it’s like-”

It points to Hinata’s desk-lamp. Then, outside the window, towards the sky.

“Those. You can’t ignore them. They wake you up. Sometimes, you’re like that too, maybe you don’t see it in each other. But sometimes humans are bright, and sometimes people are so bright that you can’t ignore them at all. He was like that.”

Even now, it continuously adapts, senses Kageyama’s discomfort with the use of the word “human” and switches it to “people.”

“What?”

It jabs a cold finger against Kageyama’s heart, right at the center of his chest.

“You have it too. You’re very bright. Hard to look at. But this face makes it easier.”

“You’re not making any sense-” Kageyama shakes it again. “What did he fall into? What do you mean you took him?”

“He fell in the lake, or the river, I don’t remember, and it woke me up. And he was so hard to look at, so I- it’s like, eating, what you call eating, but you don’t mean to do it. I don’t know another word for it. I saw you eat- you meant to do that, every time, you meant to do it. But we don’t always mean to do it.”

“We? There are more of you?”

“I think so,” it chirps, almost happily, as if that wasn’t the single most devastating thing Kageyama could hear.

“Are you an animal?”

It moves Kageyama’s hands off of it, holding his wrists again. He hates that this has become a habit, that its gotten used to doing this to him. Not walking beside him, or racing him, or shifting his weight on his heels. Those were all Hinata’s habits, and it had stolen them. The first original thing it came up with was a motion of restraint- a display of strength.

“I think so.”

“Are you a person?”

It smiles. “Yes!”

“No, are you a person? You, underneath?”

Silence. Contemplation. Idle humming, then, averting its gaze for the first time since they’d begun talking.

“I don’t think so. People are different animals. Like fish, right? They change, they eat and grow and turn into not-fish. Frogs, right? We’re like that.”

Tadpoles? Does it think we’re like tadpoles? Does it think those are two different species?

The next question escapes Kageyama before he even has a chance to second-guess his approach:

“Can you be killed?”

The being goes quiet for a long while now, several minutes, several more. Kageyama’s discomfort and nausea only spikes with each tick of the clock. Building to a fever-pitch. Building to where he thinks he might just throw up if it stays silent any longer.

Then, a revelation, it meets his eyes again.

“I think so,” it answers. “I think so!”

Relief. There was a way to destroy it, if it came to that. But then, what would that do to Hinata? Was it wearing a shell of him, or reconstructing him? Kageyama studies the surface of its skin, smooth, soft, scuffed in all the right places from practice like the knees and the elbows. No indications of wounds or rot. No unnatural features. That, in itself, was unnatural enough to make him shiver.

“Why do you know so much?” he interrogates. The creature shines with pride, lighting up at the features.

“I learned,” comes the answer. “And listened, when he fell in. You can’t block the brightness quickly, it takes time. He taught me a lot of things in that time, and I saw a lot of things.”

As Kageyama grapples with the ever so wishy-washy wording of its answer, it points at him once again, right between his eyes.

“I saw you. He thought about you a lot.”

Grief pangs through every part of Kageyama’s body, nearly doubling him over with the mere thought alone. Hinata, stuck in some vague body of water, struggling for air, screaming, dying at an excruciatingly slow pace as this thing overtook him, his short life flashing before his eyes. Why had he thought about him? Why- why enough for the double to cling to him like a tick? For it to feast on his memory? Why didn't he just fight back, save himself?

“Is that why you knew those things about me?”

Kageyama’s mouth is dry when he pushes the question forth, his body numb. It knew more than he gave it credit for. Things it hadn’t ever seen in action before reappearing in Hinata’s skin, like his habits, his likes, his full name, his nickname. It nods enthusiastically.

He can’t continue. He wants to, but the words are stiff and uncooperative on his tongue, and his face feels hot again. The double studies him very carefully.

“I can talk more like him if it’d make you stop freaking out,” the double changes tone now, subtle, but enough to be noticeable- how the words flow together more naturally, how it adopts Hinata’s specific cadence instead of its own. Kageyama wrings out his palms against his pockets, tugging at the fabric to self-soothe.

“No,” he shakes his head. “No, stop, don’t copy him.”

It shrugs, pouting slightly.

“Alriiight, if you say so!”

“I said stop.”

It sits up again, stiffer with its posture, more observant. Cold, neutral, blank. Too blank. It says nothing at all, waiting for Kageyama to continue. The setter’s legs feel ill-built to sustain the rest of him, shaking, trembling against his own will. He digs his index into his thumb in the hopes of masking this perceived weakness. If the creature was going to obscure its nature, then he would, too. He wouldn’t let it know that he was afraid. He wouldn’t. Still, the body is uncooperative- only shaking more at the idea.

A gulp gets caught halfway down his throat. Kageyama hits at his collarbone to dispel it.

“What do you want?” Kageyama steels every nerve in himself to ask, looking unflinchingly into the unknown. It scratches the back of its head, much too Hinata-like to be an original gesture.

“To win, and play volleyball. Oh- and Nationals, I want to do that, too.”

“No, y-”

Squelch.

The face splits open again, and oddly enough, Kageyama finds himself rather unphased. His nightmares had been more creative than that, had somehow numbed him from the distress of seeing writhing knotted muscle that twisted around itself like a colony of strings rather than the organic makeup of a person. The double’s left eye seems to sag downwards with the rest of its flesh.

“That is what I want to do. Me, underneath,” impatience rings clear and true in its voice, sharper, shorter, again- matching Kageyama’s own mannerisms and adapting them.

Even worse: it predicted what Kageyama was going to say.

The thing’s head separates from halves to thirds, each side-most piece gradually lifting away, more, even more, the oil the sole adhesive that keeps the segments attached. The frills reappear: translucent, blue and purplish, like the edges of jellyfish or the fluttering of plastic. They billow out from under its skin like the tails of wind-catchers, aimless in direction, ribbon-like and floating. They grow in number as its skin separates further to show off the coiling red underneath. Kageyama watches against his will as the muscle defines itself as not-muscle. Just as he’d thought, each individual segment of the flesh was its own being, wrapped like a ball of yarn, packed tightly together and absent of any fat or connective tissue.

Sort of like a flower, he thinks, watching as the “petals” sprout forth from where Hinata’s head used to be. A part of him thinks the oil will stain, that it shouldn’t reveal its form so callously- the rest of him watches as the substance evaporates on contact with the carpet.

It starts getting closer to him, slowly but surely. Each step forward counts down like the ticking of the clock, gradual, constant, pressuring more and more. Kageyama’s questions inadvertently quicken in pace.

“W-What did you want before you became Hinata?”

“Nothing. I didn’t want. You can’t want before you’re a person,” It speaks in a muffled tone, the sound raw and reverberating from the throat in the absence of a mouth. Like a microphone shoved underwater.

“Why do your eyes only shine sometimes?”

“It’s tiring to keep them closed.”

“You can’t see when they’re normal?”

“I can see, but not as much. The same as you.”

“Why didn’t you eat?”

“It’s uncomfortable.”

“W-Why are you getting clo-”

A wet snapping sound like a towel being slammed against a wall nearly deafens Kageyama. Where the creature’s broken silhouette had cast its shadow on him mere moments ago, now, it was seamless: Hinata again, unblemished, human. It stares at Kageyama curiously, like a child in an aquarium, the only thing stopping it from grabbing at the pretty fish being the invisible veneer of glass.

A moment later, the door gently slides open. Hinata’s mother pokes her head into the room from the gap.

“I don’t mean to interrupt, but I hear an awful lot of talking and not a lot of writing,” she muses. “Hinata, didn’t you say you were going to study?”

The double scratches its nape awkwardly, offering an embarrassed little laugh.

“We were studying! We’re quizzing each other,” it answers. Hinata’s mother sighs, and shakes her head.

“Well, it’s getting late. Is your friend staying over?”

When she looks at Kageyama, she sees the panic in his eyes. It alerts them both like a shared alarm: Something is very, very wrong.

“N-No, no I should- I should get going. I didn’t let my sister know in advance, she’s probably worried.”

“What? You’re not staying?” the double feigns sadness, or maybe it really is sad, mourning being interrupted from whatever it was about to do to him. Kageyama is straightening out the fabric of his shirt and gathering his things before it can even continue.

“No, I should go home.”

He turns to Hinata’s mother, bowing apologetically.

“Thank you for your hospitality. Sorry, we got a bit distracted.”

Before she can even get a reassurance or a goodbye out, Kageyama is already stalking down the hall, eagerly reaching for his shoes. Hinata’s mother chases after, rather distressed at his hastiness.

“Wait, please! It’s very late, and it must have taken you a long time to get here- why don’t I drive you home?”

Kageyama contemplates the offer. He thinks he can see the double watching him, even from down the hallway. Waiting to get another opportunity.

“Oh…that would be nice. Thank you,” he answers, refusing to look away, even for a second. The double was quick. Quicker than he expected, for he never caught it staring at him except for when it wanted to be caught. As if accepting of its lost opportunity and acknowledging that Kageyama would be returning home with supervision, it slinks back into Hinata’s room just in time to avoid Hinata’s mother looking back.

“Sho, aren’t you going to say goodbye?”

The double sticks its arm out, waving nonchalantly.

“See you tomorrow, Yamayama!”

Kageyama doesn’t wave back.

– ☾ –

The week is spent in unwilling defeat.

Their games, yes, the practice matches alone falling apart without Kageyama’s support- but Kageyama’s own will, as well. By circumstance, he has to play to the double’s liking, has to treat him like a person. Not even just any person, but specifically Hinata, even if it was the reason he was dead or worse. Even if he knew it was watching him, but could never tell when.

When break rolls around, the double only grows more insufferable, more bold.

“You should come over!!!”

Kageyama stares at the text on his phone screen, his gut churning with each letter. School forced them to interact more often than he’d like, but it had been relatively docile then, uncaring. Now, it was persistent. Determined.

“Please?” it sends, not even a minute later. Kageyama types out his own response.

“What? So you can kill and eat me or something?”

“...”

The dots dance on his screen for a while, flashing in opacity as the double determines an appropriate response.

“You watch too many scary movies. Let’s study!!!”

“It’s break, moron. What is there to study?”

“We still have homework!”

“As if Hinata ever does his homework on time.”

This, at least, brought him some comfort. The only way Kageyama found the double would be manipulated was by pointing out an error in its performance, an inconsistency in its character- it even developed Hinata’s appetite with time, and enough comments from the rest of the team expressing concern that he’s been skipping meals. To say “Hinata wouldn’t do this,” was an almost instantaneous repellant to the thing, and it would rarely repeat the behavior.

Despite its insistence on accuracy, the one thing Kageyama couldn’t stand was the mere attempt at impersonation to begin with. Their connection was gone, had never existed- it had died with the old Hinata, the original. Even if it could perfectly match his sets. Even if it wore their friendship around its neck like a medal. Even if it clung to him more than Hinata ever did. He hated to see it, hated to see Hinata’s memory mangled to this being’s liking, stirring his grief at every sight, a living ghost that roamed the earth.

The double hated this about him, too. It needed Kageyama to care. Needed him to be fooled more than anybody, because it's muse had deemed him someone so important, so essential, that even in death he couldn’t help but think about him.

“Fine, let’s play volleyball then! You can toss to me. Let’s practice at that place you found.”

He hates how it has determination, how it has persistence. It’s hard to deny it when it never leaves him alone.

“If I say yes, will you leave me alone for the rest of break?”

“...”

“...”

“We’re teammates, silly. We’re going to see each other whether you like it or not!”

“Answer.”

“Agh, fine! You’re so cold, Kageyama!”

“Promise.”

“Okay, I promise!”

Sometimes, Kageyama finds himself lost in the throes of his dread, forgetting his place, his suspicion. The double is relentless in its desire to embody everything that Hinata had been, to replace him flawlessly. Sometimes the stress exhausts him. He can worry day in and day out, but the horrible, wretched truth hovers over him- Hinata is gone, and there is nothing he can do to bring him back.

Hopelessness spawns desperation, desperation nurtures delusion. Delusion is a comforting fruit, a forbidden apple that he’s been relatively careful not to bite. Once, twice, he gives the double what it wants and forgets that it's even a double, forgets about everything it had done and continues to do. He calls it Hinata, and pretends not to notice when it breaks its fingers again with excitement.

He knows it won’t keep the promise. It knows Kageyama still needs it to agree, still needs something, anything, to make him feel grounded, better, safer.

The day is vivid and rich with the exhilaration of summer, a gentle breeze cutting through the blazing heat every once in a while, the insects continuing their constant murmurings alongside the song-birds and the happy, shrieking cries of school-children. The air smells like freedom and cheap refreshments, like visits to the coast and air fans being left on too long while the July-flowers bloom. It makes Kageyama curse how Hinata had gone missing during the brightest times of the year, forcing the world to continue with its festivities without him, to shine its warmth all around as if he’d never mattered.

When Kageyama arrives at the field outside the school, the double is already waiting, tossing a volleyball aimlessly against the nearby tree. Wordlessly they build a rhythm of receiving. The sense of grief returns, too. Hinata had gotten much better, had improved a good amount- only, this wasn’t Hinata, and it never would be. Bitterness slows Kageyama’s reaction time: Should I have told him that before he went missing? I should’ve. I should’ve been more honest, more- friendly. Even if he didn’t care. I should’ve tried.

“What’s a video game?”

“It’s something you play on a television or a computer. Not physically, it's more like- the photo I showed you, if there were a lot of photos, and if you could control what’s in it.”

The curiosity hadn’t stopped, either, and Kageyama discovered it found something freeing in being able to reveal its identity to at least one person. It could ask him as many questions as it wanted, knowing that they both knew why it would ask them, why it wouldn’t know relatively basic things. Its knowledge only extended as far as Hinata’s memory and consciousness- not anything beyond. That, it had to learn separately. An exchange of information. Bartering with existence.

It receives the ball near-flawlessly without thinking. Ironically, it played better than Hinata did when it forgot to be him.

“Why do you eat little meals instead of one big one?”

Kageyama returns the ball.

“We get hungry often. It gives us energy. Where do you get yours from?”

“What’s energy?”

It’s like a little kid, Kageyama muses. If little kids could steal identities and split their faces open.

“It’s like fuel. We need it to do things, to move, to talk. If we run out of it, we stop working- but we don’t die. We just get tired.”

“Oh. I have it, a lot of it. Is that good?”

Kageyama shrugs. The double, realizing that their rally has gone on a bit longer than what would be in-character, messes up the receive in a perfect way and trots off to find the ball.

It was asking these questions a lot, now- if something was good or bad. Arbitrary words with even looser definitions, perfect for a creature that defaulted in non-answers. Kageyama sighs, exhausted, at his wits end.

He’d thought about killing it, once or more than twice. It surely wouldn’t look like a murder if he was careful. Hinata would disappear again, for good this time, for a good reason. He’d mourn the real one at the funeral- would revel, guiltily, in seeing the team mourn as he had mourned. It’d be relatively easy if he caught it off guard. It protected something in its head, never extending past the neck, never unfurling any further than that. If Kageyama swung at it with something heavy, broke its skull in, mashed the little coils of not-muscle into paste-

The double returns with the ball. Their game continues. It’s an insulting ritual steeped in feigned peace, but it’s familiar, and Kageyama has learned that humans will do anything when craving familiarity.

“You didn’t answer my question,” it complains.

“I don’t know. I think it’s bad. You might think it’s good.”

“Pick one,” it demands, never running out of breath, never faltering. Kageyama can’t help but roll his eyes.

“It’s bad that you have a lot of energy, because I wish you’d run out of it.”

“That’s mean?” it wonders, still unsure, throwing forth a hypothesis. Feeling out the world around it.

Kageyama gives it nothing but a shrug again. Two can play the game of secrecy.

It catches the ball, refusing to give Kageyama anything else to focus on. The double looks at it mournfully. Uncomfortably, it's made leaps and bounds in matching expressions to emotions, further muddying the boundary between imitation and authenticity.

“You treat me differently now,” it murmurs, pouting in Hinata’s voice. Kageyama nods without hesitation.

“Because you’re not him. You’re something else,” he snaps. The double shrinks even further into itself, hiding behind the ball like a shield.

“No I’m not. I’m Hinata. Everything else was just a joke, okay?”

Kageyama sighs, his irritation mounting. Ever since it learned what a “joke” could embody, it began to claim everything incriminating as a joke. Patching the holes of its existence with what Kageyama had wanted to hear, back in those first few days.

“Knock it off. I’m too pissed off to deal with this today,” he grumbles.

Crap. I’m being way too honest with it. Now it’s going to get all uppity and think it's a person.

“We’re friends, aren’t we? I thought you liked me?”

Kageyama gestures for the ball to be returned, but the double refuses. He feels his own frown deepen into a grimace.

“When did I ever give you that impression?”

“Whenever we do the quick, you always get so excited. Now you’re all grumpy and mean, Grumpy-yama. I don’t like it.”

“I said knock it off,” Kageyama hisses. The double sets the ball down, leaving it useless and sedentary in the grass.

“Knock what off? What’s your deal?”

“I said-” Kageyama marches forward, crouching down to retrieve the ball himself, “- to knock it off!”

A shadow casts over him. When he looks up, Hinata is split again, writhing with discomfort, throwing a tantrum. A drop of oil splatters on Kageyama’s face, and he wipes it away as though it’d been boiling hot.

Kageyama refuses to give it the satisfaction of intimidation. He sneers in the face of it, alien and unnatural, so hell-bent on making him accept its existence.

“You’re not Hinata, and you never will be Hinata, so just stop trying already!”

It recoils as though Kageyama’s just smacked it across the face, or ripped out its frills. The movements are agitated now, like water-plants against a gruesome current. Little crackles flood Kageyama’s ears as the bones in Hinata’s hands and arms break again.

“Don’t say that,” it murmurs, hurt, dejected, the voice echoing and muddled as if Hinata were being smothered to death by a cotton pillow. “Don’t say things like that, Yamayama”

This is bad. It’s using the nicknames even in this form.

Heart-stop. Shaking. The double advances, grabs Kageyama by the wrists and pushes him to the ground, copying how he’d tackled it before. It’s fast. Too fast.

“Don’t say that, don’t say that. Please don’t say that,” it half-weeps, half-warns, Hinata's voice only growing more distorted with every letter until Kageyama could barely understand it. He struggles, kicks, squirms, digging his heel against its shins and stomach, swinging his arms against its head and neck.

The double is unphased. It lets go of Kageyama’s wrists, pinning him to the ground by the shoulders instead.

Shit. Shit. Shit. It’s really angry. Really really angry.

Kageyama pats the ground around him, reaching desperately for something, anything. The frills tickle his face, splattering more droplets of the unusual substance against his head and neck, matting his hair with it. He can smell the stench of rotting fruit.

“Why can’t you just let me win?” it asks. “Why do you always have to fight? He thought about you so much. He really liked you. Really really liked you. Why do you hate him? Why are you so mean to him?”

The words sting like red-hot thumbtacks against Kageyama’s heart. His desperate struggling ceases.

No, I don’t- I don’t hate him. I never hated him. He knew it, too. The real Hinata did. Sure, he was stupid, and naive, and arrogant, and loud, but- he treated me like a person. Didn’t care if I was the King or not. Didn't care if I yelled at him, not really, because he’d yell at me too. We didn’t need words like that to care. Didn’t need to study together or cling to each other. I would set, and he would be there, and that would be it. Forever.

But then-

He dares to peek. The double is mere centimeters away from his face, breathing, huffing, even, twitching as if it were being electrocuted. The frills are bright blaring red, fading into yellow at the ends.

It presses even closer. The voice that comes out is sluggish, barely constructed, barely legible.

“Why do you hate me?”

A pitch-black loathing floods through Kageyama’s veins. It muffles him, the flesh and the frills and the oil conjoining in some mangled appendage, vaguely tissue-colored, strong enough to dig against his jaw. Kageyama winces with pain. Oxygen grows scarcer by the minute as he finds himself hyperventilating. The creature doesn’t let up. Uncaring.

It’s trying to kill me.

Electrifying. The thought rings loud and clear above the noise in his brain like a siren, blaring, wailing, demanding that he do something, anything.

Something cool and sharp meets his touch. Rough and textured, sturdy, stable.

With a sudden jolt, Kageyama shoves the double off of him and reverses their roles, pinning it down by the throat. It wraps itself around his wrist and squeezes. Kageyama stifles a scream as a dull crunch rings in his ears, louder than the summer, burning more than the hazy heat daze. It murmurs out another accusation, another wonderance- but Kageyama is quicker.

“Shut up!”

The stone collides with the double’s center, creating a crisp series of crackles and pops amidst the wet sounds of flesh giving way. He strikes it again, harder this time.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

He doesn’t look at it. He doesn’t have to. He can hear it, murmuring, then yelping, then whimpering as he caves in what remains of its face, as he separates frills from their covers and flattens the coils beneath the fake skin. It tries everything- breaks his other arm further, claws against his chest, squeaks out every possible imitation of a plea in that wretchedly distorted voice. Kageyama doesn’t stop, not until he can tell it’s ceased squirming, not until the oil runs thick and viscous down his hand.

He gasps and pants for air, straddling the mangled double with the stone still clutched firmly in his grasp.

Another hand presses gently over his. It’s warm.

He looks down, snapping out of his daze.

Hinata stares back up at him, teary-eyed, caved in on one side of the face. Sickening. Terrified. He’s sobbing, his brown eyes wide and glossy, blood spilling out from his nose and split-lip.

“Kageyama, please…” he weeps, his voice soft and small and fragile like glass.

“P-please stop.”

Kageyama can’t look away. A million regrets flood his thoughts: maybe he truly had gone crazy. Maybe it really had been Hinata joking around, and he’d taken it too far. Maybe he’d killed him, oh god, maybe he’d been real this whole time and he’d just bashed his brain in, maybe it was all his fault, maybe he’d killed him, killed him, Maybe-

Hinata’s eyes shine in the sunlight.

Wordlessly, Kageyama steels his grasp on the stone, lifting it high above his head.

It’s not him. I wish it was. I wish he’d never gotten lost. I wish he’d never gone missing. I wish I’d been a better friend. Maybe I would’ve believed it then, the way everyone else believed it. I’d stop missing him. It’d learn how to be Hinata, and he’d come back, and we’d race to the top, and I’d win, and I’d get to look him in the face and smile. Even if it isn’t really his face. I could forget that, I could forget all of it and be happy, if I could just forget-

Hinata grabs onto his hand a little tighter, silently pleading.

It’s not him.

With a final blow, he splatters what’s left of Hinata’s distorted image into tiny, tiny pieces. What remains of its body lies still and small beneath him, broken and limp. He feels lighter now, freer, watching the remains of the double melt back into the muck it came from.

It smells like the riverside.

– 𖤓 –

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