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It had been summer, then, too, the first of Oikawa’s last three years, swelteringly airless in the school gymnasium. A half-empty can of Pocari Sweat sat perspiring to the side of the court. Everything magnified through the lens of the still heat: the scuffle of his shoes on the floor, the ache knifing at his left knee, the hush that drew taut around him as though he was the only one left in the world.
He’d spent the last one-and-a-half hours slamming serve after serve into the wooden flooring. The movement in aggregate familiar, but disassembled into its individual components he might as well have been eight again and holding a volleyball for the first time, artless and fumbling. Even as he rechoreographed the ball’s pinhead curve he knew there had been too much spin last time, and the time before that the angle too sharp, the jump too high, the toss too far, and it was then that the thought sheared through his fatigue with an absolute, incisive clarity: I will never be good enough.
It crushed the air from his lungs. Unfurled with the bruising ache of a truth delayed, as total, as devastating as the end-of-match whistle—that stunned, final confirmation of something he’d already known as soon as the ball touched the court for the last time. Only now it was irrefutable.
He waited for his breathing to even out. He picked up the ball again.
“So,” says Iwaizumi, worrying at the strap of his school bag with a finger. He only starts fidgeting when he’s dead-on-his-feet exhausted, which is the kind of illogical physical response only Iwaizumi would have, and why Oikawa, as a superlative best friend, had gallantly decided to accompany him to a clinic two suburbs down from Aobajousai. This way, if Iwaizumi collapsed on the train, Oikawa would be there to record photographic evidence. “I just—walk in? That’s it?”
“Don’t tell me you’re nervous," says Oikawa. “The brave and almighty Iwa-chan, struck down by a routine physio check-up…”
“Shut up,” mutters Iwaizumi, but his hands still. In tandem they glance up at the sign reading Kawada Clinic in block print, half-obscured by a crescent wedge of sunlight. Iwaizumi reaches for the clinic door and pins Oikawa with a dire look. “Just—try not to get lost or anything in the, what, five hundred metres between here and the station.”
“I can’t believe you would say that! How mean.” Oikawa gives Iwaizumi his best wounded expression, which, due to sustained application over the years, is not quite as effective as he’d like it to be. “I have a perfectly functioning sense of direction—that time during last year’s training camp was because I had the wrong… map… okay? And the year before that, I had a, uh, faulty compass. I’m just so unlucky all the time, bearing the cruel burden of fate’s cold shoulder alone, no sympathy from even my own bosom companion…”
A pause stretches out between them, familiar in its unfamiliarity. They have both grown too adept at talking past the issue, Oikawa thinks, wry, and he knows Iwaizumi is thinking the same. This is the same silence they enshrine themselves in after a loss. On the bus ride back to school yesterday, Iwaizumi had turned away and thrown an arm over his eyes. The movement stiff, incongruous, as though all the grace of his game had, in that gutted moment, been crushed out of him by its aftermath. They said nothing to each other. After all this time Oikawa still had no words to draw them back together.
Stripped raw by the softening afternoon light, Iwaizumi looks very young, and very tired. He doesn’t wear it well. Has never bothered to learn how to, because he’s never needed to renege on his honesty like that. Oikawa could say something now, but there is nothing he could tell Iwaizumi that he doesn’t already know. “You should go in or you’ll be late, these places are always really strict about bookings,” Oikawa says instead, too softly.
“Go home and get some sleep,” says Iwaizumi. His gaze is gentle, incisive in its candour. “Morning training tomorrow.”
“You think I’d forget?” The sun is warm at Oikawa’s back, and Iwaizumi opens the door and walks away.
Halfway through his customary post-match training session, Iwaizumi turned up at the gym, took the ball from Oikawa’s hands and dragged him towards the change room. He didn’t look livid, only tense, so Oikawa let himself be pulled along.
“We played four matches today,” said Iwaizumi. It wasn’t accusatory.
Oikawa shrugged. “My jump serves were off the whole time, you must’ve noticed.”
“Overworking yourself doesn’t—you already do way more practice than normal people.”
Oikawa shrugged again, left the but still not enough unspoken. “This isn’t junior high anymore. I know my limits.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I know when I need to stop, okay? You don’t have to worry about me, I’m not going to overwork myself, I know.”
“I’m not saying—look, I—” Iwaizumi broke off, exhaled, tried again. “Do you remember,” he said, “that video you kept watching when you decided you wanted to be a setter?”
Oikawa scrambled into an upright position. “‘Since you control more of the game than anyone else, you must work harder than anybody else on the court. Practice is the only way to improve—there is no key to success like repetition,’” he recited, rapid-fire. “‘Better the ball! Keep your hands high, move your feet to the ball, and never forget to follow through! There’s no such thing as a bad hit, only a bad set—’”
“Okay, alright, you don’t have to rattle off the whole thing.” Iwaizumi knocked his knee against Oikawa’s. “I’ve heard it enough times. What I mean is, you’re—you’re already the most devoted person I know. In the world, probably. Nobody else would do extra practice on top of their extra practice. You shouldn’t—it might never be enough for you, but—it’s true, anyway. Dumbass."
“I can’t believe Iwa-chan is still calling me names while complimenting me, how unkind!” said Oikawa, too flippant, a beat too late. But Iwaizumi narrowed his eyes and swatted at him, and the moment was punctured. They were back in familiar territory.
He’d been eight, maybe, in the early passionate throes of volleyball infatuation, soaking up every snippet of information he could find on the laptop he’d wheedled his sister into lending to him, when he’d stumbled across a video by the head coach of the men’s national volleyball team.
What is the role of the setter? The setter must toss the ball to the other players in such a way that their ability to successfully spike the ball is maximised, the video began, with a blurry close-up on Coach Ueta Tetsuya’s stoic expression. Since you control more of the game than anyone else, you must work harder than anybody else on the court.
There was some slow-motion footage of a quick. The ball left the setter’s hands, arced through the air. Its grace unmistakeable even to an untrained eye. The skin on Oikawa’s palms prickled; he drew closer to the screen without thinking.
Follow through, blared Ueta Tetsuya’s pixelated figure. The most important part of any technique isn’t the execution, it’s the finish.
The first thing he’d ever learned as a volleyball player was that things were worth nothing unless you saw them through to the end. He would have stopped, eventually. He knew his limits. But he couldn’t leave it unfinished when there was so much more he had to do.
“We don’t have training tomorrow,” said Iwaizumi, finally. “Don’t forget.”
“I won’t,” said Oikawa. It wouldn’t be enough, certainly not if they wanted to make Nationals, but for now he let it settle. “It’s my day off, anyway.”
Ten minutes later, Oikawa is beginning to regret every decision in his life that has led up to this moment. He crosses the road to an intersection he thinks he recognises. He shades his eyes and squints at the closest building. For some reason, all of the streets here are eerily identical, narrow strips of bitumen flanked by equally indistinguishable houses. Oikawa heaves a sigh of the deepest, purest regret, but there are no passers-by around to commiserate.
He slows down to an amble in the hope of passing his bewilderment off as a pleasant afternoon stroll and considers whistling a few notes to add to the character, or maybe send out a coded distress signal. Then it occurs to him that he could, in fact, send out a distress signal, thanks to the wonders of modern technology—although whether its recipients would be of any actual assistance is up for debate. He passes a house with lights strung up along the fence for what he’s reasonably sure is the third time, and the thought of wandering this empty suburban labyrinth for the rest of his life is terrifying enough that he decides to take the risk.
i’m lost!! he types out on his phone and, after a brief period of deliberation, adds seven more exclamation marks to better convey the gravity of the situation, before sending it to Matsukawa.
Arent you literally 10min away from Seijou, comes the reply, three seconds later. Also if youre texting me cant you just search up some directions
i’m out of data ｡ﾟ(*´□`)ﾟ｡ MATTSUN PLS BE MORE HELPFUL
The bubblegum pop jangle of his ringtone nearly makes him drop the phone. “Mattsun—”
“Hello,” intones Hanamaki’s voice. “You have reached Sendai’s number one speed-dating phone service, how may we be of assistance? If you would like to book a session, please press 4. If—”
“Okay, why—never mind, you need to help me!” Oikawa takes a deep breath for dramatic effect. “I’m, um. I’m lost.”
“What a shocking turn of events,” says Hanamaki, pleasantly. “Could never have predicted this happening. Not like this has ever happened before, you getting lost against all possible odds, certainly not in, say, May 2010, on a certain training camp.”
“I had the wrong map!” Oikawa protests. “It’s been two years, Makki, two long and wholesome years, just let it go, and I don’t even have a map right now.”
After what had been affectionately dubbed the ‘What The Fuck How Do You Fuck Up This Badly Training Camp Orienteering Debacle Of 2010,’ Oikawa had come to accept that maybe his navigational skills were less than ideal (or, as Hanamaki put it, ‘why don’t we just rip up the map, spin around with our eyes closed, and pick any random direction, it’d get us closer to where we’re trying to end up.’ Oikawa feels this assessment is a little harsh). This, however, doesn’t warrant the kind of treatment he gets from the people who are supposed to be his loving friends, and Oikawa points this out to Hanamaki with an injured sniff.
Hanamaki has the nerve to laugh at him. In the background, Oikawa can hear someone (no doubt Matsukawa, the traitor) chuckling without the decency to even attempt to rein it in.
“I’m going to hang up on you,” says Oikawa. "I don’t need this kind of negativity in my life."
“Mmm.” There’s the sound of a brief scuffle, and then it’s Matsukawa’s voice on the line. “So, where are you?”
“I have no idea! Why do you think I called you?”
“Maybe you just wanted to hear my dulcet voice again. Not gonna lie, that’s a pretty valid reason—”
“Wait, no—what? I didn’t call you, you called me.”
“I think you’ll find life’s much more meaningful when you learn to let go of the little insignificant details and embrace the big picture, you know. Anyway, what can you see around you?”
“Houses—so many houses everywhere, and they all look exactly the same—”
“Maybe it’s an early symptom of heatstroke,” says Matsukawa.
Oikawa ignores this. “—and, and, I feel like I’ve been walking in circles for hours. Hours! Tell me what’s going on, Mattsun.”
“Identical houses and time loops. I see,” says Matsukawa. “Hanamaki, what do you think?” A short pause. “He says this sounds like a horror game he’s played once.”
“What did I say about negativity?” wails Oikawa. “I’m going to die alone and hungry, trapped here for eternity… if I never escape, please remember my beautiful face fondly—”
“You could try going back to the clinic before the lonely death idea,” Matsukawa suggests, which is the first piece of legitimate advice he’s offered in the entire conversation so far.
Oikawa sighs gustily. “Yes, but if I could find my way back to the clinic, I wouldn’t be asking you for help right now.”
“That just—hurts me, you know. That wounds my heart. I’m giving the phone to Hanamaki now. Take the phone. Take it before I start crying.”
“Good luck!” says Hanamaki, having regained possession of Matsukawa’s phone. “We believe in—nah, I can’t even say it with a straight face, but I guess you’ll probably stumble your way across… somewhere. I’m sure you can figure something out, captain. Nice talking to you, see you tomorrow! Hopefully.”
“Makki,” protests Oikawa, but the only response is the beeping of a disconnected call. He texts Hanamaki THANKS SO MUCH MAKKI, to which Hanamaki responds always happy 2 help :)
(＃`Д´) i’m trading you all in for better friends
wow rude
Rude is right, Oikawa thinks, pocketing his phone. Rude is what Hanamaki and Matsukawa deserve. Really, who needs friends anyway? He can find his way out of this situation by himself. In the distance he catches sight of the greyish smudge of Aobajousai’s stolid façade, so he reorients himself and heads towards it. At least he knows for sure he isn’t endlessly retracing his steps. At least a building is there for him during these trying times.
Actually, despite his general allergy to direction, Oikawa could plot out his school and its surroundings with his eyes closed. The result of three years spent steering through them—the winding corridors and wide staircases, the reams of sunlight sheeting in through the windows. How that light scoured everything clean, and from there on it was up to you to choose what you made of it. How anything could become familiar, with time.
They had just gone on lunch break when Hanamaki stabbed a chopstick in Oikawa’s direction as though challenging him to a duel and said, “So.” It was the kind of gleefully loaded pronouncement that, Oikawa had learned, could only precede either a spectacularly bad idea Hanamaki planned to rope him into, or a particularly vicious round of ribbing, complete a with dramatic reenactment of whatever it was that Hanamaki had dug up this time. Either way, there was only horrific embarrassment awaiting him; Oikawa hastily swallowed his mouthful of rice to brace himself. “I’ve been hearing some interesting rumours, lately. Something about a—what was it again, my memory’s gone a little fuzzy—”
“A jersey upgrade, perhaps?” Matsukawa supplied.
Oikawa let out the breath he’d been holding. He could contain this topic of conversation before any irreparable damage to his psyche was sustained. This time there would be no glow-in-the-dark underwear incidents. “Well, you all know the vote’s today, so nothing’s official—”
“And Shiba-san’s been taking you to all those matches and tournaments for months, just because,” said Iwaizumi.
“I could run for captain,” Matsukawa said mournfully. “I think I’d make a great captain. With my… motivational speeches. And everything. The whole package.”
“I’d vote for you,” said Hanamaki. He leaned over the table, took one of Matsukawa’s tamagoyaki, and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “You inspire me.”
“But what if you scare all the new first-years off?” protested Oikawa. “They’re so very delicate and small. So small! You have to handle them with care, like when you put woollen jumpers in the wash, otherwise they’ll fade and shrink and snag everywhere and then you’ve spent all that effort and money for nothing—”
“That was you two short years ago,” said Iwaizumi, but the corners of his mouth were tugging upwards, so Oikawa chose to overlook this slight.
“And, you know, that’s not very fair to me,” said Matsukawa. “Are you implying that you can herd kids better than I can? I’m very inspirational when it comes down to it.”
“I mean, I’d rather look at your eyebrows than at Oikawa,” agreed Hanamaki. “They’re far more distinguished.”
“Unbelievable!” cried Oikawa, jabbing a finger in the air. “That was uncalled for! Iwa-chan, defend my honour.”
Iwaizumi gave Oikawa a long, measured look, and then seemed to decide that his time and energy would be better invested in the prompt consumption of his curry udon. Oikawa prodded at his side several times to spur him into action, to no avail.
“Some best friend you are,” grumbled Oikawa.
“See? Even Iwaizumi agrees,” said Hanamaki. “It’s three against one. Majority rules.”
“What is that even supposed to mean? What does this have to do with anything?”
“Remember when we found out our classes at the beginning of the year,” said Matsukawa, “and we were all in different ones.”
"Ah, yes, a truly moving time," said Hanamaki.
“Not really,” said Iwaizumi, who, up until then, had been in every single one of Oikawa’s classes since elementary school. “About time, more like. I was starting to get sick of your faces.”
“Of course I remember,” said Oikawa. He’d made an impassioned speech along the lines of, Even though we have been separated by forces beyond our control, we remain as one in my heart! upon which Iwaizumi had pegged Oikawa’s own pencilcase, a chic fluorescent-green tube spangled with tiny alien heads, at him. “But what’s your point?”
“Be patient, young one, I’m getting there. Honestly, the youth these days, always in a hurry.” Matsukawa shook his head like he was thirty years instead of three months older than Oikawa. “Anyway, as I was saying, Oikawa cried all over me at training.”
“I did not!”
“We were right there,” said Iwaizumi. “We all saw you.”
“I have photos,” added Hanamaki. “I’ve been saving them for a special occasion, maybe graduation. Maybe even your wedding.”
“Then he went all intense on the new first-years with the whole strengths and weaknesses profile thing, which, I don’t think they were looking for a professional psychoanalysis when they signed up for a volleyball club. Oikawa, I think you scared most of them off.”
“It was a welcome gift to help them settle into the club and start improving, not that you’d know what that’s about—”
“The point is, you’re too weird. This,” said Hanamaki, picking out another of Matsukawa’s tamagoyaki and waving it in the air, “is why nobody wants to be friends with you.”
“Well, I can’t help it,” said Oikawa. “Reading people is literally my job as a setter. Nobody complains when I do it on the court—”
Matsukawa patted his shoulder. “It’s okay, captain, we just tune you out whenever you start getting really into it.”
“What? You do? Seriously? That is so rude—” Oikawa stopped. "Did you just call me ‘captain?’”
Iwaizumi cast a baleful eye over the table at him. “Like it was going to be anyone else.”
“Hey, I resent that statement,” said Matsukawa. “I feel like I had a decent shot at it.”
“You literally just called me—”
“So anyway,” said Hanamaki, raising his voice, “I’m glad our captain is going to be you and not, like, Ushiwhatever. If we wanted someone who was not a whiny space nerd and moderately okay… ish setter, I guess, if I were to be generous, we’d be at good old Shiratorizawa learning to milk sheep and sow carrots or something. Got it, captain?”
“… yeah,” said Oikawa. It was too earnest, too raw. He cast around for something appropriately theatrical to puncture the moment and came up wordless, in the wake of the warmth spreading through his body, and from there what else did he have left to say? “Yeah. I got it.”
Night had fallen by the time Oikawa got home. They’d won both of their matches, but it was only the first day of Interhigh. There was still the inevitable finals showdown with Shiratorizawa to come. He loaded the first disc of today’s batch (2012 IH R1 Seijou v Nissaka) into his computer and plugged in his headphones, blinking at the sudden brightness of the screen. The footage shook a little, but the framing was perfect. He’d have to thank the concert band girls who’d recorded the match, later.
Overall, Nissaka had little to offer, but Oikawa knew better than most how the addition of just one new player could change the dynamic of the entire team. It was always worth cataloguing in greater detail any quirks and tells of rival players he could exploit, just in case. Nissaka had a first-year with a promising spike and a second-year libero with good instincts; he’d have to keep tabs on them.
The Oikawa onscreen spun the ball in his hands and tossed it up, and Oikawa’s arms tensed instinctively in response. Nissaka's libero dived for the ball and flicked it back into the air. Less spin, Oikawa thought then, unbidden. A few centimetres to the right and it would have been an ace. Too far forward, Kindaichi likes higher sets. Bend your knees, bend your knees —
The match ended: 2-0, a crushing victory to Aobajousai. Before the video cut off, Oikawa caught a glimpse of Nissaka's captain, face crumpling, then smoothing into an unsteady smile. Rallying his team around him. That, too, was muscle memory. Oikawa jittered his fingers against his right knee. It was barely midnight. There was still enough time to watch through at least two more matches. Drawing his knees up to his chin, Oikawa replaced the disc with the next (2012 IH R1 Datekou v Hokuo), and pressed play.
One thing about Aobajousai’s otherwise unremarkable architectural design is that leaving via the main gate in the summer months means having to cross from the shadowed walkways directly into the eye-searing light of the afternoon sun. This necessitates a good half-minute of dazed blinking before your vision adjusts to the sudden influx of light; in the meantime everything floods with white, incoherent. The sky is always the first thing you see, afterwards, all white fading to blue, to white.
You knew what you were going to see once your vision resolved itself, but still—always that initial breathless shock of just how open the sky was, every time you left the school, as if to say, you too will be this unlimited.
The morning afterwards, practice had been progressing as per routine until Oikawa’s focus had slipped for a moment and a volleyball hurtled at terminal velocity into his stomach, knocking his breath loose. His knee proceeded to seize the opportunity to buckle beneath him. Mortifying! Before he could so much as hoist himself to his feet, the whole team had converged upon him and for a moment all he could see was blue and white, dizzyingly at odds with the bare-beamed gym ceiling beyond.
“Oikawa-san! Are you okay?” bellowed Kindaichi, throttling the offending volleyball in his hands with such fervour that it looked apt to burst. “Is anything broken? Ruptured? Do you need anything? Should I get you an ice pack?” His voice began to edge into a worryingly hysterical register. “A heat pack? Compression bandages?”
“No, no, it’s fine, Kindaichi, no need to panic,” Oikawa said, fluttering one hand in faint alarm and prodding at his abdomen with the other. “I just zoned out for a moment, nothing’s broken. Or ruptured. I’m all good!” It was true, it barely hurt; Kindaichi, on the other hand, looked like he was on the verge of herniating.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Iwaizumi. “Ice it now, or it’ll bruise and you’ll start whining about the flames of agony or whatever. Afternoon training’s been called off, so you’d better get some rest before you pass out on the court, idiot.”
“Al-right, I’ll skip—”
“I mean it,” Iwaizumi snapped. “If you set one foot in the gym—or watch a single second of yesterday’s footage either, while we’re at it—”
“Okay, okay!” Oikawa eased his tone into a sunny effervescence. “I won’t, there’s no need to scare the first years with your ghastliness, Iwa-chan, what kind of best friend—”
Scowling, Iwaizumi thwacked him on the shoulder, but didn’t pursue the topic further. The team dispersed again, reassured by that familiar sight. Oikawa hobbled to the side of the court to press an icepack to his stomach while the others resumed their training drills. The numbness spread. Yahaba’s jump serve was starting to show some finesse, although it would be a while before it became a real weapon. Oikawa picked up his water bottle. He’d have to do a few more one-on-one sessions with Kunimi, too, to work on his receives. But they were—they were good, his team. All of them. They would be good.
Surpass, he thought, testing the heft of the word. They will surpass me. He waited for the attendant bitterness. It came—of course it did—but it was far, far lighter than he’d expected.
It takes Oikawa another good twenty minutes of walking before he spots a convenience store, positively aglow with divine radiance, nestled amidst the rows and rows of terrace houses. He has never been so grateful to see the familiar letters of FamilyMart in his life.
The burst of air-conditioning that slaps him in the face as soon as he walks in the door is the most welcome thing he’s ever felt. Skirting around the magazine section (who wanted to run the risk of being assaulted by Ushijima’s stunningly unphotogenic crag of a face, anyway?), he trudges over to the food aisles. He deliberates over the chilled soda cans in the display freezer, but he figures he might as well indulge himself to compensate for the ordeals of the last hour, so he grabs a milk bread bun off the shelf.
“Excuse me,” he says, as the cashier rings up his purchase, “but which way is it to the station?”
She stares at him. “Just down the road and turn left. It’s impossible to miss. You’ll be able to see it, it’s… it’s right there.”
Of course it is. Oikawa thanks her and takes the bread. Despite its unabated pressure at his back, the sun is already beginning to list towards the horizon. He sits down on the concrete step outside the store and tears the wrapping open. i’m free now no thanks to u two, he texts to Hanamaki and Matsukawa.
(｡•̀ᴗ-)✧, says Hanamaki.
Please let us study in peace, says Matsukawa.
ONE DAY SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME AND THEN YOU’LL BE SORRY!!!!
(｡•̀ᴗ-)✧, says Hanamaki.
Oikawa is in the middle of typing out a long and furious reply when his phone screen fades to black. Unbelievable. At this point, he doesn’t even have the energy to be offended by the world’s vendetta against him anymore. He takes a large bite of pillowy cream to console himself, and lets his gaze drift up.
If he didn’t know what he was looking for, he wouldn’t be able to pick out Aobajousai’s particular profile from the cluster of similarly mundane grey buildings against the skyline. But it demands his attention, dragging Oikawa’s eyes towards it, unerring as a compass needle drawn to its magnetic north. A different kind of reflex.
The Grand King, Karasuno’s #10 had called him yesterday, all comical terror before the strange thorn-sharp focus of that freakish quick. There was nothing grand about the countless hours spent learning the pressure of the ball against his hands. Oikawa remembers training until his fingers bled and his eyes unfocused and his limbs shook with tense, glassy exhaustion. Eventually the skin on his palms would harden and the pain would subside. Eventually muscle memory would take root and that—that had to be just as good as the nebulous thing people called talent that he was utterly, utterly certain he did not possess.
He’d held it at arm’s length during his middle school years, but he’d known it even then. It was, of course, personified in the form of an earnest first-year who coaxed spring growth from his sets like all of the years Oikawa spent splitting his hands raw were nothing. Inconsequential in the wake of someone whose body already understood, instinctively, how to navigate itself.
Summer three years ago in the school gym, and he could have stepped back, full to the brim with an awareness he could no longer evade. He’d picked up the ball and thought about mapmaking, about delineating its territories, its limits, all the things he could not recognise yet.
A setter is, at heart, a gambler: casting bets with the toss of a ball, condensing a hundred different possibilities into one. There were only seconds to make that choice, barely enough for instinct, and everything else was left to faith. He’d known that from the beginning, too, Ueta Tatsuya’s voice piping through his sister’s tinny computer speakers—you must work harder than anyone else, and the unspoken for less return —but he’d earned it, surely, the legacy Shiba-san had passed on to him: the number on his jersey, the privilege of keeping his eyes open against the onslaught of light.
Oikawa pushes himself to his feet, crinkling the plastic wrapper in his hand to break the unsettling somnolent hush that’s fallen over the afternoon. The sun-soaked concrete pressing the last vestiges of the day’s heat into his skin. Buoyed by that borrowed warmth he could be weightless, every inch of him straining upwards towards the sky which might as well be the bare-beamed gym ceiling for all its unreachability. He is not Kageyama with his gardener’s hands. He was born unknowing what it is to seek out the pulse of the game and shape it into something he can direct, but he’s learned—is still learning—how to find his way there.
He slings his bag over his shoulder and heads down the street towards the station, away from the deepening shadows. Interhigh is over. Any loss after this will spell the end of his high school volleyball career. And still—how he could walk out of Aobajousai’s gates and into the expanding horizons with faith again, conscious of his shortfalls and shouldering past them, regardless. Believing that he too could be just as unlimited. Now he works with a cartographer’s steadiness to chart the extent of his reach, this inheritance of everything he’s made out of himself.
You poured yourself into the things you loved and it would never be enough. But anything could become familiar, with time. That was what Aobajousai had taught him. Now it is time to follow through.
There was something about the air on the court. Even standing off to the side, waiting to be called up, Oikawa could feel how it thickened under the glare of the floodlights and hundreds of waiting, watching eyes. The rush of that dense, coiled intensity pressing over him like a mantle. The 1 on his shirt, stiff with newness, felt like something burning between his shoulderblades: a brand, or maybe a beacon. Without his knowledge or approval, his hands had curled into the shirt hem, and he splayed his fingers to untangle them, kept them taut.
“How are we all feeling today?” he said, pasting on the most scintillating grin in his armoury. One of the first-year reserves (Sasaki, middle blocker) took an involuntary step back. “Iwa-chan looks even grumpier than usual! Did you stay up too late last night? Getting enough sleep is very important, you know, especially before matches. And Iwa-chan really needs all the beauty sleep he can get!”
With a snort, Iwaizumi straightened up from a stretch and rolled his shoulders. Instead of the answering tirade Oikawa had expected, all he said was, “You’re one to talk.”
Oikawa flung out his arms. “Well, I think you’ll find that you’re wrong! As your amazing, mature, and extraordinarily responsible captain, I always make sure I’m in peak physical condition.” At Iwaizumi’s unimpressed expression, he let his arms and his smile fall. "This is our first match as third-years, so—we’d better—”
Iwaizumi’s hand shot out and latched onto Oikawa’s wrist. He stilled at the sudden contact, the words on the tip of his tongue drying up. It occurred to Oikawa that this was Iwaizumi’s first time wearing Aobajousai’s ace number, too. “Don’t you dare,” Iwaizumi growled, “start doubting yourself now. You aren’t supposed to carry the whole team by yourself—no, shut up, that’s not what a captain does. You know that, dumbass. You’re never the only person on the court. What the hell do you think we’re here for?”
“I know we’re pretty, but we can do more than stand around and look nice,” drawled Hanamaki, draping himself over Iwaizumi’s shoulders.
Matsukawa nodded sagely from his other side. “That’s true. We are very pretty. Even you, captain.”
Oikawa felt all the breath rush out of him as if he’d been hit. He closed his eyes, lightheaded, and when he opened them again his team was there, as they always had been. All he’d ever had to do was turn and look. Iwaizumi gazed steadily at him, unerring in his intensity, in the lingering warmth of his hands on Oikawa’s skin, and as always Oikawa drew on that foundation and forced his shoulders back. “Alright then,” he said. “Alright then,” he said again, louder, with a clap of his hands. His team quietened, expectant. “We’ve all worked hard to get here, so let’s show them what we can do, hey? I’ll be counting on you all!”
It could have been any court, any match—Interhigh, Spring High, even Nationals; that was what it meant to stand on the court in Aobajousai blue, its burnished hallways behind him and the endless stretch of sky before him. All the things he carried with him, the number on his back that marked him as a vessel of that legacy. It was the space between the ball touching the court for the last time and the end-of-match whistle, the knowledge before the knowledge. How you held your breath for the sound anyway, let it stun you without overwhelming, in conscious ritual, devastating in its totality, its irrefutability, because you’d already known, after all, and wasn’t that worth something?
It had taken him three years, but he knew the steps from here. In thirty seconds they would walk onto the court. He’d toss up the ball and leap, the entire court laid out beneath him, a map he’d long since learned by heart, and for that one acute moment before his fingers reached the ball, the world would be still. Silent. Holding its breath for his serve. Holding its breath for him.