Archive of Our Own

“Hey, Kageyama, can you promise me something? For when we reach the end?”

Hinata Shouyou is a man on a mission.

(In truth, he is a boy with a bucket, but those two things look arguably similar under the glare of the afternoon sun.)

He’s the protector, the last thing that stands between his family and the danger, the final defense against all evil. He stands along the shoreline, a silhouette of a soldier, ankles sunk into the water, bucket gripped tightly in one hand, with eyes scanning the shallow depths of the water before him, quick and steady. His feet are sinking into the sand with each wave the comes and goes, but he holds his ground. His mother had always said he was strong, and now it’s more important than ever. He must be brave, must stay guarded. He is a man on a mission, and it is his most important one yet.

The enemy? Jellyfish.

Pink, translucent, and by all means a threat to be wary of. He can’t let them hurt anyone, not his family, and especially not Natsu. She’s barely even tipping the age of three, sitting on his mother’s lap under the bright blue umbrella, not too far from where Shouyou stands. He’s their protection.

A flash of color, and Shouyou dips his bucket into the water quickly before running back to the sand, tossing the fallen opponent into the hole he’d dug earlier. He marches back to the water triumphantly, and continues to search the tumbling waves.

The sky is turning pink and gold now, flecks of sunlight dusting his cheeks as the sun begins to dip down on the horizon. It leaves a mark on the water, all the way back to him. Vaguely, he wonders if it’s possible to ever reach the end, or if the world will keep going, if the ocean will stretch for miles until it finishes its quest for land. He wonders what one would find. What happens at the end of the world? What prizes await the people brave enough to take the jump and move on forward? What happens to them after the end?

But these are things he can’t comprehend—not yet, anyway. He lets his hands curl in the water as he shakes these thoughts away, listening for the distant call of his mother. Time to start packing up, she says, what do you want for dinner?

It’s then that it hits him.

Quick as lightning, sharp as a sword, a hit or miss run. It’s the prick of a thousand needles, a loud cry, the mess of hot tears as they begin their journey down his face. His hand is red, injured from a sting, from the one that got away. He drops his bucket and runs for his mother, shaking and terrified.

His mother calms him down quickly, holds his hand, and says that everything’s going to be okay. You’re so brave, she says, my hero.

But he doesn’t feel like a hero. Not at all. He had looked away, lowered his defenses, and missed the jellyfish. He was down for the count, a mistake that should have never been.

Shouyou learns pride by its name that afternoon, a double-edged sword that seeps into his bones and makes itself a home. For his trouble, there’s a lightning scar that runs across the palm of his hand for the rest of the summer, and he wears it like a battle scar.

“What kind of promise?”

“I don’t really know. But the kind that lasts.”

When Shouyou makes it to his third and final year at Karasuno, it still feels like there’s so much left to do.

There’s so much left to think about, to see, so many things left unsaid and actions remaining undone. There are still lines he has to cross, bridges he has to build, walls he must punch through. There are silences to overcome, hands to hold, promises to make. He has a lot of things to do, and even with his excessive energy, he’s beginning to wonder if he could possibly have enough time to do everything.

Time. That’s the enemy this time around—except there are no buckets to use as swords, no crashing waves to turn into shields. There is only him, and the whole world as his battlefield. There is the sunrise, his friends, and all the truths he has to make into a reality. There is hope and lingering doubt, but one always manages to outweigh the other when it comes to cases like these.

His fingers drum against his desk, feet tap against the floor. He’s in English class, and he really should be paying attention, but his mind is elsewhere, too far gone to call back to the classroom. So much to do, but he’s still here, still stagnant when there are kingdoms out there that he still needs to conquer. Decisions to make, things to cry about. Halfway through his last year, and graduation couldn’t be any closer.

(What happens after the end?)

A paper finds its way onto his desk, folded in half. Shouyou looks to his right, meets Kageyama’s eyes, diagonal to where he sits. This sort of thing is almost routine already between the two of them: the exchange of tiny notes in the middle of classes, the quick glances at each other when the teacher says something funny, the panicked look they give each other when one of them is called to recite and doesn’t know the answer (and the other can’t help either, because they’d both stayed up last night talking instead of studying), the small gazes to make sure they’re both okay. Sometimes, Shouyou looks at Kageyama simply for the sake of looking at him, and something always settles just right when he gets lost in the midnight blue.

Kageyama gives him a pointed look, one eyebrow raised, as if to ask, What’s wrong? Shouyou only shrugs and offers a weak smile. Kageyama doesn’t look convinced at all, and Shouyou knows he’s always tended to wear his heart on his sleeve but he’s beginning to wonder when Kageyama had begun to understand his heartbeats well enough to know him better than anyone else. His eyes flicker to the paper before focusing back on Shouyou once more. He blinks once, then turns to face the teacher once more.

He unfolds the paper.

Hi.

Shouyou allows a small smile to curl on his lips, and he sneaks a glance back at Kageyama. There’s the faintest trace of pink on his skin, from where his chin rests on the palm of his hand, arm propped up on the desk. He’s staring right ahead, seemingly focused on the lesson, but Shouyou knows that his mind might be lightyears away from here. People like Kageyama have always been meant for the stars, after all.

Kageyama catches him looking, and Shouyou waves in response, mouthing a small hey. This is another sort of routine between them: little greetings when the other doesn’t really know what to say, a small reassurance of simply being there. There’s a future ghost of a smile that nestles on Kageyama’s lips, and it’s one of Shouyou’s personal favorites. It’s genuine, the kind that looks like the sun peeking out behind the clouds for the first time after a long stormy night. If Shouyou is lucky, that smile is part of their routines too, a finale of sorts.

If Shouyou is even luckier, these routines of theirs can be the first exception to the inevitability humanity has ruled as change. A constant, amidst the chaos.

And in between the lightyears and the minutes that keep him here on earth, Shouyou flips the paper over and writes as neatly as he can at the very top. The title is clear and he stares at it, satisfied. He’s never been too good with lists, but for this, he’s willing to try.

THINGS TO DO BEFORE GRADUATION

An Ongoing List by Hinata Shouyou

Shouyou taps his pen on the desk. He bites his lip, and slowly writes, the tip scratching on the paper. He thinks back to their routines once more, their back and forth exchange of greetings and inside jokes, words only traced through a bond that can’t be broken—their own special kind of telepathy—and sneaks another glance at Kageyama.

1. Hold on to whatever you can.

The bell rings a second after he finishes writing, so Shouyou cleans up the other papers and notebooks on his desk. He’ll have to ask for more notes later, and he prays that it’ll be enough to earn him passing marks this term. He can’t play volleyball if he fails.

Kageyama comes up to his desk. He holds up a neatly wrapped bento box. “Lunch?” he asks. Then he squints at the paper on Shouyou’s desk. “What were you writing?”

“Nothing!” he says quickly, grabbing the paper and tucking it into his pocket. “It’s not important. Don’t worry about it.” Instantly, he wants to take his words back because saying things like don’t worry about it have always done the opposite, have led people to bury themselves further into concern. He bites the inside of his cheek.

Kageyama stares in disbelief but nods. “Okay,” he answers, but Shouyou knows him well enough by now to know Kageyama’s curiosity has not swayed. Maybe Shouyou will show him the list soon, when everything settles down. Maybe. It’s definitely a thought for future days. He wonders what Kageyama will say when he sees it (he thinks it’s a cross between a hidden smile that holds promise or a soft muttering of dumbass that keeps fondness tightly all the same).

“So where do you want to eat today? Rooftop or under the tree?”

Shouyou tilts his head and reaches for his own lunch. He hums thoughtfully. “Rooftop. We ate outside yesterday.”

They leave the classroom together, and Shouyou tells him about this show he was watching with Natsu yesterday, how the princess was the true hero in the end. Kageyama listens, all the way to the rooftop, and he interjects here and there at all the right moments. He’s always listened to Shouyou, no matter the length of his ramblings or how messy the details. Kageyama doesn’t ask him to stop talking when it’s moments like these, and Shouyou’s always appreciated that about him.

He even smiles sometimes, when Shouyou says something that entertains him enough. And if he’s going to be honest with himself, his smiles are a wonder of the world.

Soon enough the conversation turns to volleyball—it always does, somehow, because it’s the thread that connects them in between the unlikely friendship, the connection that settles into their bones—and there’s a glint in Kageyama’s eyes when Shouyou mentions the upcoming competitions. Sharp and deadly and proud, Shouyou has learned that this is the look he gets when there’s something Kageyama really wants—and when he knows he’ll get it.

Kageyama looks at him, and it knocks the wind out of his lungs. “We’re gonna win.”

Shouyou grins. “To the top of the world.”

Later, he writes another thing on his list.

2. Go to nationals, and don’t stop until you reach the top.

There has to be something about cities, Shouyou supposes, that lures people in with its charm and breathtaking wonder. He has never been a city boy, a child of Miyagi who knows that stars are brighter in the places that people dwell less. It’s all he’s ever known—little shops of odd eccentricities, charms and baked goods, groceries to bump into old friends, the lady who always gives him half off on ice cream when he comes by, and trees that fill his world instead of urbanized buildings. Little boy, the wind croons late into the afternoon, won’t you stay a little longer?

But surely, he thinks, that the never-ending expanse of city lights, the colorful frenzy that Tokyo brings, must be something to stay for. To come back for, at the very least. People come and go, stay and leave, change and rebuild, switch from countryside to cityscape, and Shouyou wonders if there is a world in between. He’s known the hills and the dirt roads all his life, but the thrum in his ribcage beats in sync with the thrill of the city, settles into his bones perfectly. To choose, he believes, will be quite a hard decision.

He’ll go where the city takes him, followed by all his small town roots.

There are universities in Tokyo; that is what this all comes down to. It opens up a whole new world he could possibly take for his, and Shouyou knows to aim for the stars. He’s not entirely sure how far his volleyball career will take him—to a national stage, he hopes, but he’ll need to work harder for it. He’s no genius, not like Kageyama is, with the way the ball moves exactly where he wants it to go, a frenzied understanding, but Shouyou knows what it’s like to be built from the ground up. He’s done it most of his life, and maybe he can push it a little further.

Scouts will be watching him this year. Shouyou will take all the spotlights. He must.

He lets out a little breath of air, twists the ball in his hands and bounces it between his legs. Then he falls backward, eyes shutting as his back hits the gym floor. The sound of volleyballs is comforting in their own way—an echo of old friends and newer ones, of shared memories, of invincibility. He breathes in and out, softly, and he can hear the first years hustling around, the beginnings of packing up and heading home. If he focuses, he can hear the melody of a ball spun thrice then thrown into the air to be hit with an unstoppable force. A killer serve, if he knows one, and he wears its rhythm with familiarity like an old favorite song.

The ball hits the ground, and he takes Kageyama’s soft grunt in exchange for satisfaction, and he wonders about the inner workings of his best friend. If Shouyou’s heart beats any differently when around the likes of Kageyama Tobio, then that’s an entirely different conversation altogether. If his hand twitches to be held when they walk home together sometimes—quite often, truth be told—then that is a matter to be discussed another time. Thoughts about kissing a boy with midnight eyes were definitely in a different league on their own.

He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know that Kageyama has found a spot next to him on the ground, breathing heavy and skin laced with sweat. There is a tiny point of contact between their arms, but Shouyou thinks none of it.

“Hey, Kageyama,” Shouyou says quietly. He can’t hear anyone else anymore; they must’ve all left to changed already. “What do you think will happen this year?”

Kageyama grunts, and Shouyou wonders if his eyes are closed too. He’s always been better at this whole meditation thing than Shouyou has been or ever will be. Shouyou’s never been one for stillness, for the softening of the world around him, instead choosing the rush that comes with constant movement. Kageyama’s concentration never really breaks. It’s just one of those Kageyama things, Shouyou’s come to learn.

“What do you mean?” asks Kageyama. Shouyou can hear him shifting on the floor, maybe inching closer, judging by the way the heat grows on his skin. “Things are always going to happen.”

“I know,” Shouyou says. The fluorescent lights glare past his eyelids, a seeping white. He sighs. “I just meant, I don’t know, what do you think will happen this year? To us, I mean? Do you think we’ll change?”

He snorts. “I doubt you could ever get better at serving.”

“That’s not what I meant!” Shouyou exclaims. “You know I haven’t missed a single serve this year. I’m getting better.” He holds a hand up in the air. “I was talking about the two of us. Not—not volleyball.”

And it’s not like they haven’t spoken about themselves before, two people with a formed partnership that’s a force to be reckoned with, a deal that cannot be broken. They’ve talked about their futures a couple of times, but always with faint touches and nothing more than the usual we’ll meet in court, whether together or against and a quiet promise of but preferably together, so stay with me please.

“We’ll still be friends, dumbass, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Kageyama tells him, if a little bit shy. “No need to worry about things like that.” About things like us. “If everything else has to change, I’ll give you something constant.”

“And what would that be?”

“Us,” he says, “being together.”

At this, Shouyou blinks his eyes open and lets the light come streaming in. He finds Kageyama lying next to him, body relaxed and breathing steady, hands folded atop his chest. But he’s not facing upward like Shouyou had been; instead, he’s looking right at Shouyou, something quite unreadable in his eyes, on the verge of something else entirely. He gets this look sometimes, but Shouyou’s never really been able to understand it, despite his expansive knowledge of Kageyama’s expressions and inflections. He wonders what he’s thinking.

“Hey, Kageyama,” Shouyou repeats, but louder this time around. Kageyama doesn’t stop looking at him, intense and adorned with Shouyou’s favorite shade of blue. A boy of midnight, with a king’s crown atop his head and a robe to carry on his shoulders. In another lifetime, a prince destined to rule over kingdoms. “I think I’d like that.”

(Maybe, in that same lifetime, Shouyou could be his knight, and they’d rule together, fighting back to back but always, always, on the same side of the battlefield.)

Kageyama breathes quietly, before gently moving his hand to where Shouyou’s own rests. He links their fingers together, and Shouyou watches the way a light pink covers his features, like the sun beginning to set. He might be blushing, or it could just be the heat. Shouyou doesn’t dare dream, so he’s inclined to think it’s the latter, maybe.

Shouyou squeezes his hand, and he lets out a breath. He thinks of something he could possibly write on his list, but thinks better of it. He swallows down ideas of any confession, grabs hold of his I like you’s before they can escape his breath. Such matters of the heart do not wait for unsuspecting boys of midnight, and Shouyou doesn’t want to bring the dawn just yet.

Instead, he closes his eyes again and breathes.

3. Thank those who have helped you.

“You really don’t have to do this, you know,” Yachi says as they enter the coffee shop, and a little bell chimes over their heads as the door opens and closes. Spring follows them inside, stray petals fluttering in, pushed by a gust of wind. He’s always liked this kind of weather, the in-between, on the precipice of a changing season. “I like teaching you. It’s really fun.”

“But that doesn’t mean it’s easy,” Shouyou replies simply. They both stand in line now, though they both know each other’s orders well enough, having spent many afternoons pouring over Japanese characters and English letters alike, over algebra and chemistry and the incomprehensible worlds where they collide. Company is always appreciated nonetheless, and they stand together now, like they always have. “Besides, this is long overdue, I think.”

They order their drinks and a slice of cake to share, and take their seats by the window. All the trees and flowers are in full bloom by now, light pinks and greens overflowing the scenery. Shouyou smiles at the world beyond the glass, and knows that home is the place you make it to be, but there is always going to be something unshakeable about the place you grew up in.

“So,” Yachi starts. She takes a bite out of the cake and hums.

“So,” Shouyou echoes.

“Well, you see…” she says, staring straight at him. There’s a tilt in her voice that tells him what she’s about to say may be of importance, but Shouyou can’t find what she might be looking for. She looks at him like she’s on the verge of a conversation that might not be too comfortable. She sighs, “I was talking to Kageyama the other day.”

He blinks. “About what? Because if this is about the English test the other day, I swear it wasn’t my fault he got the interpretations wrong because I told him that it had something to do with butterflies, but he insisted it was about rocks and I tried to tell him, I really did, but you know how he gets sometimes, and honestly, Yachi—”

“Hinata,” she interrupts gently, a light tap to his arm. She shakes her head, a loose smile on her lips, with traces of an exasperated fondness that has only grown over the years. “I’m not talking about that. Though we’re probably gonna have to revisit that in case in comes up in the final exam, but not now.”

“Oh,” he says, and there’s a thump in his chest now for reasons he can’t quite explain. “Then what did Kageyama say?”

Here, she bites her lip, chews it on it lightly. Her eyes flicker to the window briefly, and in the time that he’s known her, he takes these as her signs of nervousness. There’s never been a lot that didn’t scare her, but she’s gotten braver over the years, and he likens her to the way you leave the best flowers to bloom a little longer.

“Are you ever going to tell him?”

This isn’t the first time they’re having this conversation, and he knows that unless his answer is yes, it’s not going to be the last. He’ll just have to make amends with his doubts once more, because he’s still unsure of what to do about the whole thing to begin with.

“You’ve liked him for a while now, haven’t you?” she says, and it’s not a question—no more than how he winces slightly when thinks about how a while has stretched to mean a whole of year, months of simply waiting and sneaking tiny affections and hoping that someone else will take the next step forward for both of them. “Don’t you think it’s time to tell him?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” he mumbles, lowering his eyes when Yachi doesn’t look one bit convinced. Maybe that’s the problem with having close friends, after all, he thinks, because they know you well enough that it feels like sometimes you don’t need to think for yourself. “Besides,” he continues on, swishing his cup of hot chocolate (he’d had coffee once and got way too hyper and Kageyama hasn’t been able to let him live it down), “it’s Kageyama. It’s not like I even have a shot. And we’re graduating this year, there’s not—things are going to be changing and it’s too late for these kind of things, anyway.”

“It might be too late,” Yachi says, “but it’s also a bit too early to start thinking that way.” She takes a sip of her drink, and foam collects on her upper lip before she wipes her mouth. “And you really think you don’t have a shot? That’s what I really wanted to talk to you about, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

She rests her elbows on the table, sliding a little bit closer. The rest of the world blurs behind her, and Shouyou focuses on her next words carefully. “You really should listen to the way he talks about you. He makes it sound like you built the whole universe but still chose to stay, and it’s actually, well, it’s actually kind of really cute. Not to mention, you’re the only one he ever talks about.”

His mouth is suddenly very, very dry. “Yeah, when he’s calling me a dumbass,” he mumbles, ducking his head into his sleeve to hide his blush.

She sighs, and settles her cup on the table gently. “Do you want to know what he told me?”

Stiffly, he nods.

“‘Sometimes it looks like he’s making a quick out of the sun,’” Yachi quotes, a tiny smile to linger. “‘He’s something solar.’”

“Solar,” he repeats quietly, mouthing the words. “Something solar. I don’t—Yachi, what does this have to do with my feelings?”

Yachi’s always had the patience of a saint, and even now she does not give up on him just yet. “He thinks you’re like the sun, Hinata. And people like him—people who have learned to live with the shadows—from my experience, they’re the ones that yearn for the sun the most.”

Shouyou curls his fingers, but he stays quiet. A heavy silence rings through the air, muted but fragile, and he’s unsure what words he could possibly say to fill in the gaps.

“You don’t need to do anything now,” Yachi says, words soft and lingering still, and they hang in the balance to give space. “But just think about it, okay? Before the year ends?”

Hold on to whatever you can.

He nods, and offers a smile, taking a sip from his cup. “Okay,” he agrees, but he doesn’t feel so certain. His stomach always feels weird when he thinks about confessing, how the words have always been right on his mind but seem to come out a mess when he thinks of breathing them into life. Kageyama has always had a way of understanding him, words or not, but this is one of the things that must be said with clarity. Kageyama deserves that much.

And maybe one day he will get the courage to add confessing to his list of things to do, but for now, he settles with the aftertaste.

(Hinata Shouyou has never been one for the likes of settling, but he makes this is a tiny exception. He always seems to be making exceptions whenever Kageyama Tobio is involved, anyway.)

“Where will you go, after graduation?” he asks her, a swift change in topic. Yachi has always been the best of them, an intelligent girl with dreams to carry and the heart to follow through with them. Her work might take her all over the world, to places Shouyou could only dream off. There are more grounding places than Miyagi, and he thinks of how there are cities with high-flying skylines to help you touch the sun. He thinks of Tokyo, of New York, of Paris, of cities to rise and cities to fall. He wonders if she’ll find a home in any of them.

“Somewhere new,” is what she says, vague enough to imply that she hasn’t entirely put much thought into it any further than he has. Then she smiles, a bit sadly, a bit wistful, “Somewhere far away, probably.”

“I’ll miss you,” he says, because he knows they’ve always been meant for different places, and she is much more than a volleyball manager. “But you’re going to do great, wherever you end up.”

“Thank you,” she tells him, and her eyes are lighter. “And when you get to the national stage, because I know you will, send me tickets at the least, would you? I’ll be your number one fan.”

And at this Shouyou smiles at her, wider this time around. “And I’ll be yours, of course.”

Her phone buzzes on the table, and Yachi takes a look at it quickly. “Ah,” she says, an apology spreading through her cheeks, “I’ve got to go. I’m meeting with Kiyoko-chan at the station.” There’s something brighter about her now, and he can feel her excitement.

“Go ahead then,” Shouyou tells her, and he catches a sunbeam in his eyes. “And tell her I say hi, okay? And to come visit soon!”

“I will.” Yachi grins at him, beaming and bright and it takes him back to when they were younger: a little afraid but excitable more, a boy and a girl trying to take on the world, the echoes of a mother’s doubt soon erased by a heartfelt dedication to a team.

They leave the shop together, and Shouyou thanks her once more for everything, you know I wouldn’t have made it this far without you, and she hugs him tight, a promise for tomorrow and never-ending days. Shouyou waves while she leaves, then tucks his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

There’s always been something in the spring air that keeps him calm and unbothered, his days do not feel so numbered and his nights even less so. He breathes it all in and counts to twenty before letting go, the sting in his chest almost reminding him of something else. He takes the roads he knows, and familiarity curves his steps. Shouyou wonders what it’ll be like, when a new life begins with concrete he doesn’t recognize and trains that lead to different worlds. Come home, the birds sing to him, but leave if you must.

Inside his pocket, a list remains untouched but thought about, waiting for more to be written.

The months pass gently, and Shouyou finds himself in between seasons, the world caught in between spring and summer, holding its breath as the wind warms itself a little more. The Interhigh competitions are quickly approaching, a week right into the corner, and practice has gotten even more intense.

On a particularly tiring day, Shouyou sets out to complete another thing on his list.

4. Buy some pork buns for the first years, because it’s what the third years before you have always done.

He walks with them to Coach Ukai’s store, and hands them one each. They wear grateful, tired looks on their faces, and Shouyou tells them that the food will definitely make them feel better and that it’s always worked for him. He passes some to the second years, too, because they’ll have their turn too once the months fall away.

“That was really nice of you,” Yamaguchi comments. He’s changed a lot from when they began, from quiet to bold, but never quite losing his gentleness. “Though, I do have to ask, what brought it on?”

Shouyou sputters. “What’s wrong with buying them some food? You do it all the time!”

“Well, yeah, because I’m the captain. It’s my job to make sure everyone on the team’s doing alright,” he replies, a teasing smile. “Did you lose a bet with Kageyama or something?”

He pouts. “And I’m the vice captain! Can’t I just buy some pork buns for the first years out of the goodness of my heart?”

At this, Yamaguchi laughs. “I don’t doubt your goodness, but I also do know that you’re almost as broke as I am from that time we decided to do some karaoke.”

He sighs wistfully at the memory. He and Yamaguchi had sung all the songs they knew, and their voices were terribly hoarse by the time they left. “That was really fun, and I still have no regrets.”

“Neither do I,” Yamaguchi says, “but you haven’t answered my question.”

“I told you,” Shouyou says, “I just wanted to. The third years always did it, and I figured it was my turn, too.”

“Hm,” Yamaguchi hums out, a sound between words. “That’s really thoughtful, Hinata.” Shouyou watches as he kicks at a rock near his feet, skidding away to the side. The first years bicker in the background, a familiar sort of noise. “We’re really going to be leaving soon, huh?”

“Yeah,” he answers, and the word sounds loose on his tongue. An agreement to something quite not there yet. His voice is softer, when he says, “As much as I’m really excited, it’s really scary, too.”

“I know,” Yamaguchi whispers. The first years wave to them as they begin their walk home, and the two of them are left under the stars. Shouyou’s always thought Yamaguchi’s freckles look like they belong in the sky with them. A boy for the constellations, with a map right on his skin. Yamaguchi Tadashi is the star in starting over, pinch server to captain. “I don’t want to lose anything just yet.”

How much exactly Yamaguchi has to lose, Shouyou doesn’t know. Maybe he never will, because no matter how well you know a person there will always be things to be kept personal. Hidden, from the rest of the world to see. There lies an extent that runs deeper than the dark.

He thinks of his own instead: his mother and his sister, home and all he’s ever known, his bike, his very first team and everything Karasuno means to him, his friends and their support, the way the sun rises over the mountains, blue to pink to orange, how it reminds him of the uniform he wears with pride, even Kageyama. Especially Kageyama. Shouyou doesn’t want to lose what they have and everything else, not now, not soon, and not ever.

“Not yet,” Shouyou says. Then louder, clearer, because he doesn’t want to miss his mark, “Not yet. We don’t have to lose anything just yet. For now, our best bet is to keep going, keep playing.” He turns to Yamaguchi, and smiles. “It’s what we do best, after all.”

When Yamaguchi smiles and looks to the heavens, Shouyou takes it as an affirmation.

“You ready?”

One fist meets another, two heartbeats fall in sync.

“If I’m here, you’re invincible.”

5. Always pick yourself back up, no matter how many times it takes.

They lose after their third match at the Interhigh Preliminaries, and so evening finds Shouyou and Kageyama in the school’s track field with the fading sun as their backdrop. They run and yell out their frustrations for only the heavens to hear, the sting like a runaway jellyfish, and by nightfall, it is through silent exchanges of breaths that they make wordless promises to do better tomorrow.

Where are you going?

He’s running down the road, halfway to breathlessness, when Kageyama falls into step next to him.

“Hey,” Shouyou greets cheerfully, and he doesn’t slow down. They’ve always known to keep pace with each other, after all.

Kageyama nods, if a bit shy. “Hi.”

Shouyou hums a song he heard off the radio. Kageyama remains quiet next to him, and Shouyou almost has half a mind to ask why he’s here, but he also knows not to question the good things. Count your blessings, and learn when to let them go.

They run alongside the river, and the wind is cool on his legs despite the heat, the clouds parting in the sky for sunlight to stream by. The water rushes along, unbothered and noisy enough for the both of them. They’ve run this path too many times to count, have the road written on the back of their hands, but the air they breathe in is always new, always something to come back to.

Where are you going?

“Hey, Kageyama,” Shouyou says, sneaking a glance up at him.

Kageyama nods in acknowledgement. Shouyou watches the slope of his nose, the line of his jaw, the tiny sprinkle of freckles at the top of his cheeks, the way sun catches on his hair. Morning light dances on his face, and he looks so beautiful for a boy of midnight.

Things have always been simple with Kageyama. They compete against each other, they run and race, they bicker more often than not, they eat lunch together, and it’s never really been hard to talk to each other. Their own sort of telepathy. A way of understanding each other without words, of speaking with only eyes and actions. Synchronized heartbeats, easy greetings.

“You’re my best friend,” Shouyou says simply.

Kageyama stops abruptly. He’s looking at Shouyou with wide eyes, mouth slightly agape, and a blush blooms on his cheeks. “What?” he says, blinking. “What—what did you just say?”

“You’re my best friend,” he reiterates. Shouyou tilts his head, shrugging. “I just thought you should know. Have I really not told you that before?”

“No,” Kageyama says, and he’s glaring at the ground. “I would’ve—I would have remembered.”

“Well,” Shouyou says, stepping closer, “now you know. You don’t have to say I’m your best friend or anything like that, obviously, because that’s totally up to you, but I just thought you should know that that’s what you are to me.”

When Kageyama keeps his focus trained on the ground, Shouyou starts getting antsy. And maybe here’s another thing about him, and it’s that words tend to come out quicker without filter when he’s nervous.

“I mean, if that’s okay, of course. I’ve had a lot of friends, you know, but I was just thinking, and—we’re pretty close, right? And you understand me sometimes when no one else can, and sometimes you make me feel all gwahh inside and you get me. I don’t know, it just means a lot? But like I said, you don’t need to return it—”

“Hinata,” Kageyama says quietly.

“—and it’s totally fine if you don’t see me as your best friend, too, I’ll understand. Really, I will. So. Anyway, do you think we could keep on going? It’ll get really hot soon—”

“Hinata.”

“—and then we’ll both get all sweaty, not that I mind that so much, but it is summer, so it’ll be even worse. I’m planning to run a little farther, and you can come with me. Again, it’s if you want to—”

“Hinata, dumbass, just shut up for a second, would you?” Kageyama interrupts, and it effectively works.

Shouyou snaps his mouth closed. “Oh. Uh. Okay.”

Kageyama still won’t look at him, though. He clenches his fists at his sides and inhales. “You’re my best friend, too,” he mutters, “so you don’t need to worry about anything, okay?”

“Really?” Shouyou says, and his face lights up. The jitters fall away instantly. “Really, Kageyama? I’m your best friend?”

“Dumbass,” Kageyama says again, and his cheeks are red. His eyes flick to Shouyou for the briefest moment before they’re back on the ground again, clearly embarrassed. “Don’t make me regret saying it.”

“So it’s true then? I’m your favorite person?” Shouyou sing-songs, and he bounces on his toes.

“I never said that,” says Kageyama. He’s blushing furiously.

“But that’s what it means,” Shouyou tells him. “I’m your favorite person!”

Kageyama doesn’t deny it, though, so Shouyou takes it as a win.

“Hm,” he hums, patting Kageyama’s shoulder and smiling as cheekily as he can. “Don’t worry, Kageyama-kun. You’re my favorite person, too.”

If possible, Kageyama’s face gets even redder.

“Idiot,” he says, but it’s nothing but fond. His hand comes up to hide his smile, but Shouyou finds it anyway. He looks up at the sky. “Can we go back to running now? Please?”

Shouyou grins, and he takes off running within a split-second. “Race you to the end of the river! Winner has to buy pork buns!” he yells into the wind, laughing. He can hear Kageyama calling after him, but his footsteps catch up quickly.

Where are you going?

Shouyou ends up winning by a quick second, tumbling into the grass with lightning in his heart. It feels good, like he’s letting things out of his chest. Breaths he didn’t know he was holding. Ribcage expanding, heart thumping, he becomes just a little more golden.

Kageyama hands him a pork bun, collapsing on the bench with deep breaths. “Here,” he says. “And happy birthday, by the way.”

Shouyou smiles widely. “Aw, Kageyama, you remembered!”

“You think I’d forget my best friend’s birthday?”

They share smiles at that, and Shouyou feels something warm in his chest. Like butterflies, maybe, filling his insides until all he’s left with is a happiness to last a lifetime. And maybe past that, too, through whatever finds him after. He wants to feel like this all the time.

“Wait, you didn’t let me win because it was my birthday, right?”

“Of course not,” and the smile doesn’t falter at all. Shouyou thinks he’d like to see Kageyama smile all the time, too.

He inhales, and stretches his arms. Shouyou holds his hand up to where the sun stands in the sky, almost reaching it but not quite yet. Something solar, Yachi had said. He wonders if Kageyama still thinks the same of him now. If he’ll still think the same thing in the years to come.

Time is slipping right by his fingers, his days are falling like dominoes, and he’s not sure if he can keep pace.

“Careful,” Kageyama warns, but it’s half-hearted, teasing. “If you think too hard, you’ll hurt yourself.”

Shouyou punches his arm lightly. “Jerk.”

Kageyama rolls his eyes, though it’s nothing but fond. That look is more frequent nowadays. “Dumbass.”

“Idiot.”

“Stupid.”

“Hey, that’s cheating, you copied my insult.” Shouyou pouts.

“Did not.”

“Yeah, you did,” Shouyou says, shaking his head. “Can’t even be original. Shame, Tobio, shame.”

Kageyama sputters, instantly turning a bright shade of red. “You—dumbass—” he says, and he places his hand on Shouyou’s cheek to push him away.

Shouyou laughs. “Hey—I’m kidding, I’m kidding!”

He only huffs and crosses his arms, face turned the other direction to calm down the redness in his cheeks. “I’m going to kill you,” Kageyama mutters.

“Sure,” he says easily. Shouyou’s finishing the last of his pork bun when a thought occurs to him. “Hey, hey, since we’re best friends and all, does that mean I can call you Tobio?”

Kageyama’s murderous look would be more effective if he wasn’t blushing so hard. “No,” he says sternly. “No, absolutely not.”

“Tobio!” Shouyou says loudly. “Tobio, Tobio, Tobio— ”

“Shut up,” Kageyama says, “Shouyou.”

And oh. Because now his insides feel all tingly and his face feels incredibly hot and why, why does it sound like his name belongs there, with Kageyama—

“See?” Kageyama mutters. “Now you understand.”

Shouyou shakes his head and the rest of his feelings. “Nope,” he says stubbornly. “I’m still gonna call you Tobio.”

“No.”

“Please?” Shouyou pouts. “Come on, it’ll be, like, a test of our friendship.”

“Still no,” Kageyama says.

“Why?” asks Shouyou. “I mean, it might be a little weird at first, yeah, but we’ll both get used to it eventually, don’t you think?”

“No, it’s not that.” Kageyama runs at his eyes, huffing. “You just—it sounds really—”

Shouyou tilts his head. “It sounds what?”

Kageyama’s ears turn pink, and he shakes his head. “Never mind,” Kageyama says. Then he sighs, staring at his hands. “You know what? Okay. Fine. You can call me Tobio—but only sometimes, okay? I don’t think—I don’t think I could handle it if it was all the time. Just if it’s important.”

Shouyou nods, satisfied. “But what if it’s always important?” he teases. “Talking to you always is.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Kageyama grumbles, but the tension melts away from his shoulders.

Shouyou shrugs and swallows. “I guess that means you can call me Shouyou, too, if you want.”

“Shouyou,” Kageyama says slowly. There goes those feelings again, right up his spine and into his bones, around his ribcage and through his veins. A tingle of something, of warmth. “Shouyou,” he repeats, and he says it carefully, like it’s something fragile and important. Shouyou’s name sounds safe with him, like it’s found a home already.

Shouyou nods. “Tobio.” And he grins, wide as he possibly can. Kageyama returns it with a tiny smile. One breath for an infinity’s worth of tomorrow’s. “So,” he says. “Do you wanna race again? Maybe I’ll even let you win.”

Kageyama snorts. “As if I’d let you do that. I’ll beat you fair and square.”

“You can try, then,” Shouyou says, grinning. His chest expands, and he feels his own heartbeat sync with another’s. “Ready?”

Where are you going?

“Always.”

In a matter of seconds, they’re off, and they leave the rest of the world in the dust. Hinata Shouyou is eighteen years old, and about to take on the world by storm, already halfway to the sky.

And what will you do to get there?

6. Go anywhere. Everywhere. To the top of the world, as long as he’s with you. Do whatever it takes.

Shouyou stumbles as he runs up the hill, and breathes out a laugh into the fresh summer air. A whole new season is here to conquer, and he takes to it with open arms and new bruises to show for it. He slows down once he reaches the very top, taking in the view with a wild heart beating in his chest.

The rest of his town stretches out beyond him, tiny blocks in the distance, trees blooming under his gaze. The sun is beginning its journey home, and the wind picks up its pace. A hometown occurrence, and he wonders if Tokyo has views like this. If the buildings and artificial lights could ever replicate how the lingering sunbeams catch on the world before him. The neon multicolored lights for the city were something else for sure, but different types of beauty called for different things.

“Nii-chan!” Natsu yells, huffing and cheeks red, smiling from ear to ear. She runs up right next to him, jumping from where she stands to get a better look. “Carry me!”

And Shouyou obliges. He bends down on his knees for her to scramble unto his back, her arms locking around his neck as he holds onto her legs. She rests her chin on top of his head and gasps at the view.

“You’re so heavy already,” he teases lightly. “What have you been eating?”

“I’m just trying to get taller than you,” she answers, and he can feel her smug grin. “I don’t think it’ll be too hard, though.”

Shouyou scoffs lightly, offended. “Where’s your respect, huh?” He lightens his hold on her legs and pretends to drop her, laughing when she yelps. “That’s what you get.”

She pouts. “I’ll tell Okaa-san you let me fall, and she won’t let you play volleyball anymore.”

He gasps. “You wouldn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Okay, okay,” he says, half-laughing. “You win.”

Natsu hums in approval, and squishes Shouyou’s cheeks together. “Duh.”

“Cup your hands,” Shouyou tells her, using one hand to guide one of her own, “and it’ll be like you’ve got the whole world right with you.”

She giggles when she does as she’s told, cooing softly in awe. “It feels like I could keep it in my pocket. Like I could bring home with me anywhere I go.”

Shouyou laughs, bright and honest. “Yeah,” he agrees, and he allows himself to think of the possibility of doing just that. “That way you’ll never get lost, right?”

“Right,” Natsu says, voice a little softer. “Hey, nii-chan? Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” When she doesn’t keep going, he asks, “Natsu? What’s wrong?”

“Okaa-san said—she said you’re going to be leaving soon,” Natsu says quietly, but it feels like the rest of the world is listening in, “and you’re not—you’re not going to forget about me, right? No matter where you are?”

“Of course not,” Shouyou says, pressing his lips together. He crouches and lets her back on the ground. “I won’t.”

Her eyes widen by just a fraction. “Even if you’re in Tokyo?”

“Even if I’m in Tokyo,” he affirms.

“What about Osaka? If you go there? Or Kyoto? Or to another country, like America? Or Europe?” she asks, eyebrows furrowing in something determined. “No matter where you are in the world, you’re sure you won’t forget me?”

“No,” Shouyou says carefully. Then he cups his hands, just like he’d told her to do earlier. “I have home in my hands, don’t I? I’ll always have you with me.”

There’s a little smile that curves on her lips. She takes one step forward and wraps a loose arm around his waist. The stars are already hanging in the sky. Even the sun has to go home sometimes, he supposes.

“And besides,” he says, “if I travelled the world, don’t you think I would take you with me?”

Natsu beams up at him. “Really?”

He smiles. “Really. Anywhere you want.”

She buries her face into him again, holding tighter. “Thanks, nii-chan.”

Shouyou returns her embrace, and the stars shine down on them.

7. Keep going, keep going, keep going.

8. And don’t you dare ever stop.

“Say, Tsukishima,” Shouyou says, approaching the middle blocker, spinning a ball in his hands. “Can I ask you something?”

“That depends,” Tsukishima answers, not even sparing him a look. His shoulders are lowered as he sits on the steps, relaxed, the afternoon light casting a halo unto his hair. “Will you take no for an answer?”

“Nope.” Shouyou takes a seat next to him, bouncing the ball on the concrete below him. He hears the familiar sound of someone spinning of the ball behind him in the gym, counts to six (because that’s how many times Kageyama always does it), before it’s tossed into the air and hit with brutal force. He tilts his head just a bit, and yells, “Go killer serve!” then turns back to his previous conversation. “So I’m gonna ask you anyway.”

Tsukishima sighs, and he wears that same exasperated look he gets whenever Shouyou’s even just in the same room with him. “Fine, but no dumb questions, if you’re capable of doing that.”

“Wow, you really are meaner when Yamaguchi isn’t around,” Shouyou comments.

Tsukishima rolls his eyes. “Well? Get on with it. I don’t have all day.”

“What would you do,” Shouyou begins, drawing in a breath, “if the world ended tomorrow?”

Tsukishima scoffs and shakes his head. “What did I just say about dumb questions?”

“This isn’t dumb,” Shouyou insists, and he slows down on his dribbling. The ball stutters slowly to a stop. “Just think about it. If the end was coming, wouldn’t you want to try everything before it did?”

“No,” Tsukishima deadpans. “And the world isn’t going to end.”

“That’s why I said if,” Shouyou says, and he’s on the verge of irritation. “Okay, fine. If it was the end of the world, who would you spend your last day with?”

Tsukishima mulls this over, and the answer seems to be right on the tip of his tongue. “Tadashi,” he says slowly, almost hesitantly. “I’d spend it with him. There. Are you happy?”

“Not yet,” he quips. “Just one more question.”

“Then you’ll leave me alone?”

“Then I’ll leave you alone,” he agrees. Shouyou stretches his legs out into the pavement, the volleyball resting on his lap. Everything is quiet for a moment, and he thinks about how moments like these should always be exhausted for how rare they are, little phenomenons of a grander scheme. He looks at Tsukishima. “Why?” he asks. “Why Yamaguchi?”

Tsukishima furrows his eyebrows at this, the sun glinting off of his glasses, the gift of a flare from the heavens above them. “Because I don’t have a reason for it not to be him.”

And it’s then that Shouyou recalls a conversation he had with Yamaguchi a lifetime ago, thinks back to the words uttered, and he finds that I don’t want to lose anything yet could also be another reason altogether. Because it’s just as Tsukishima said: the world isn’t ending just quite yet and there isn’t time to fret over things like these, because they aren’t there yet, not when there are games to play and tests to pass. They haven’t reached the end yet, though the days are passing towards it, a train headed for a collision course. How many minutes does he have left before the impact? Count time like currency, spend it wisely, and never forget that it too will run out one day.

“Graduation isn’t the end of the world,” Tsukishima says quietly, “if that’s what you meant or if that’s what you were thinking. I mean, it’s the end of something, but not the world. So—”

9. Don’t hold back. Don’t leave any regrets.

“If this is about the king,” Tsukishima says, face all pinched up as though it pains him to say it. “And I don’t know nor do I want to know anything about you two, so take my advice if you want to or not. Time isn’t going to stop for you, so get it right before it decides you’re not worth the wait.”

Shouyou nods mutely. He hears the sound of another ball being served to the opposite side of the court, and turns his head to watch. Kageyama stands there looking breathless, sweat dripping down his forehead as his lips curl into a tiny, satisfied smile. His eyes meet Shouyou’s all the way from across the gym, and distance matters nothing when it can be overcome.

We’re going to make it to the top, Kageyama seems to say, their strange telepathy a connection between them. Together.

And together, Shouyou knows, is how he’d like to spend his last day and all the days leading up to it.

10. And if that means telling him, then do it.

(That night, Shouyou resolves to tell Kageyama Tobio one day, about how much he likes the idea of them being together.)

11. Take your time, but don’t waste it.

Shouyou spends the evenings after dinner to practice blocking with Lev and Inuoka, his arms sore and body feeling heavy by the end of each night. They’re four days into their training camp with other Tokyo schools, and as much as Shouyou loves it, it’s never been more exhausting. He pushes himself because he knows he can do better, then he pushes himself even further because he knows he can be the best, and with his last chance at Nationals running on the line, he’s not going to let this go by chance.

He’s walking along the different gyms when he spots something on the ground, almost overtaken by the slope of grass and hidden by the shadows.

Kageyama truly is a boy of midnight.

“What are you doing?” asks Shouyou in lieu of greeting, lying down next to his best friend without a second thought. The cicadas chirp somewhere around him. “I was gonna go see if you were still practicing to get some quicks in.”

Kageyama grunts. “Figured it was enough for the day,” he answers. “I was counting the stars.”

Shouyou laughs softly. “You can’t count the stars, Bakageyama. There’s too many. It’s just one of those things that’s uncountable. Like strands of hair.”

Kageyama turns his head to face him, and there’s that something else in his eyes again, the one that Shouyou can never for the life of him quite understand no matter how hard he tries. “I don’t think so,” he says. Then he raises a finger to place on Shouyou’s cheek, to where a sprinkle of freckles begin. “There’s twenty-one right here.”

Shouyou’s cheeks warm, and he’s embarrassed that Kageyama can feel the heat under his skin. He’s also embarrassed that Kageyama doesn’t look like it all, either. He’s perfectly calm, living up to his title of royalty. Except this time they’re not on the court; they’re just two boys on the brink of growing up. “That’s not what I meant,” Shouyou mumbles, and he moves away to cover his face with his hands. “Stupid.”

Kageyama shrugs and turns to the stars—the real ones this time—once more. “I was just thinking.”

“Dangerous.”

“Shut up.”

“What were you thinking about?” Shouyou questions.

“A lot of things,” Kageyama tells him. “Too many, actually. It was getting really messy. I’m glad you showed up.”

“Oh,” Shouyou says, and for once he does not pry. “You can tell me some of it,” he says instead. “It might help untangle them.”

Moonlight graces Kageyama’s face, and he becomes ethereal under it, as though he already belongs to the heavens they lay under. A king in his castle. Don’t leave yet, Shouyou thinks, don’t leave me yet.

(Because Shouyou will make sure to make a heaven on earth if it means Kageyama will stay.)

“What will you do after graduation?” Kageyama asks quietly, his words fragile like glass. He hears graduation like the sharp intake of wind it is, a deadline for the rest of them, the start of a new age.

And Shouyou has asked this question to many people, but never has it been asked of him by someone else other than himself.

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly, and he wishes he could give a better one. “Volleyball, for sure, if I can have it. But if not…”

But if not, then what? What is there to Hinata Shouyou outside of a volleyball court, what is there for him to take and conquer? He’s never been the best academically. He’s barely passing in some subjects, never an ace outside of the net. If he can get scouted, it would be his ticket to a proper starting line. But if not—

“Then I’ll find something else,” he finishes, though unsure. “I’ll find something else.”

(Middle blockers are a dime a dozen, and Shouyou can always come so close but not exactly there yet, constantly an almost. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t given up—he never will. And if Kageyama ever learned of his doubts, he’d shake them all out if he could. And Shouyou knows he still has so much to prove, there’s a greater fight in him that no one will see coming.)

It’s no use asking Kageyama about his alternate option because there simply isn’t one. Kageyama Tobio is a genius setter with a killer serve, a rare thing that can’t be passed up. He’s got eyes looking on him from all over; there’s no better route for him than volleyball stardom. And it’s Kageyama’s dream, to always be part of the best six. To bring out the potential of others with him.

“You know, Kageyama,” he says before he can think better of it, “I think you’re like a star.”

Kageyama looks at him curiously. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Shouyou shrugs. “I don’t really know. Like, you know the stars are always there, but you can only see them at night? You’re like that. You’re all scary and angry all the time, but you’re actually a really good person. Hidden, sort of, but still bright. Does that make any sense? It probably doesn’t, but. Yeah.”

“Oh,” Kageyama says after a moment. There’s a curve of a smile, a ghost that allows a fraction of visibility. “Um. Thanks.”

Shouyou keeps a smile to himself, stretching his arms over his head. He yawns, blinking. “I could fall asleep here,” he says sleepily. “That would be nice, don’t you think?”

“Don’t do that,” he says, rolling his eyes. “You’ll get insect bites and stuff. Besides, you haven’t even showered. You stink.”

Shouyou sticks his tongue out. “At least I wasn’t lying in the grass like a creep,” he retorts.

“You’re lying with me right now!”

“Well, it’s less creepy if there’s two of us,” Shouyou tells him. “It doesn’t just look like there’s one dead body.”

“We could be two dead bodies,” Kageyama says.

“That is,” Shouyou says, frowning, “a fair point. But it’s not the main one here.”

“And what’s the main point, then?”

“That it’s really comfy here and I’m so tired and I don’t think I can even get up and walk back to the room,” Shouyou tells him, groaning and shutting his eyes. “I’m so tired, Tobio.”

“Dumbass,” he hears Kageyama say. Then there’s a bit of rustling next to him, and he peeks an eye open to see Kageyama standing. “Come on, get up, I’ll carry you.”

Shouyou blinks. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Kageyama replies, not looking at him. The shadows aren’t enough to hide how color slowly rises through his cheeks. “You said you were tired, didn’t you?”

“But aren’t you tired too?” asks Shouyou.

“Do you want to walk or not?” Kageyama asks impatiently. “So?”

“Fine,” he says, and he gets up from his spot on the grass. Kageyama crouches and Shouyou climbs into his back, looping his arms around Kageyama’s neck. He rests his chin on Kageyama’s shoulder as the latter begins to walk, not any slower than usual. “Thanks,” he mumbles, closing his eyes and trying to slow down his heartbeat. He can feel Kageyama’s own from his chest pressed against his back, and he must be heavier than he thought, if Kageyama’s heart rate is faster than it normally should be.

“It’s okay,” Kageyama says quietly into the open air, but only for Shouyou to hear. The cicadas are quieter now, because even they must know when to soften their edges at times. Go to sleep, they sing, the world will still be here tomorrow. The stars twinkle, an infinite number despite the twenty-one on a boy’s cheeks, and the moon herds them all home.

Shouyou closes his eyes, and lets the world fall away.

“Hey, Hinata. I have to tell you something.”

“Whatever it is you think I did, I swear I didn’t do it.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“I—”

“Kageyama?”

“Ah. Never mind.”

12. Don’t forget to study! This one Shouyou writes half-asleep, in a poor attempt to motivate himself into getting some summer homework done before he tucks in for the night. Practice had run late, and if he was being honest, it was due to his own doing—he’s got a record of fifteen perfect jump serves in a row now, thank you very much—but now he’s taking the short end off it. He’s barely even begun his math homework, and he’s got another one essay to do and he can’t even think of where to begin. Language was stupid anyway—why need it when bwah’s and gah’s could perfectly convey all he was trying to say?

He groans and buries his head into his arms, stuck on a question he’s sure Yachi taught him how to solve just the other day. He’s almost there, he knows it, but there’s always something wrong and his answers don’t feel right. The enigma of numbers and letters, one he’ll never understand. It’s all so stupid.

Dejectedly, Shouyou picks up his phone, and waits for the other end of the line to pick up.

“Oi, Kageyama,” he says when the beeping stops, “have you done your homework?”

There’s a bit of shuffling on the other end. Kageyama must be outside, and judging by his deep breaths, he must’ve been practicing. “There’s homework?”

Shouyou sighs. Of course. “Yeah,” he says. “And I don’t get any of it.”

“Is it math?”

“It’s math,” he confirms. “I tried looking at my notes, too, but I couldn’t understand any of it. We’ve also got that essay, don’t forget. And remember, the poem uses the butterflies as a metaphor for life, not the rocks, okay? I asked Yachi about it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Kageyama says. “Hey, are you free on Sunday?”

Shouyou glances up at the calendar over his desk—not that he uses it much, but it’s got important dates on it. “Yeah, I think so. Why?”

“Let’s go somewhere,” Kageyama says, a hint of nervousness in his voice.

“Sure,” Shouyou agrees. “Do you have anywhere in mind?”

“Sort of,” he replies. “Just leave it to me.”

“You’re not planning to kidnap me, right?” Shouyou jokes, unable to keep a smile off his face. It’s not often that Kageyama wants to go places; most of the time it’s Shouyou dragging him around, through the hills and stores and all over town. “Because your three years of building up friendship was actually really convincing.”

“I’m not going to kidnap you,” Kageyama huffs, but Shouyou knows him well enough to know he’s smiling too, it just a bit. “Okay, I think I’ll start on the homework now. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yup,” Shouyou says. “See you tomorrow.”

The call ends, and he turns back to the pieces of paper strewn all over his desk. He focuses back on the math question before him. He can do this. He can do this. Shouyou repeats this as a mantra he hopes will stick, and the night wears on around him, a warm greeting from the moon.

(Shouyou meets Kageyama for volleyball practice the very next day, and doubt waits for him to take back his offer. He doesn’t.)

“We’re at the zoo,” Shouyou says, clearly surprised. He turns to Kageyama. “Why are we at the zoo?”

It’s Sunday, and Shouyou had met up with Kageyama at ten in the morning at the train station. Kageyama wouldn’t tell him where they were going, and Shouyou had expected it to just be a sports store or at the very least a food court ( or if he was lucky, a video arcade, but in hindsight, he doubts Kageyama’s ever been to one—he’ll have to fix that), but now they’re standing at the entrance of a zoo. He’s been rendered speechless for the last two minutes.

Kageyama shrugs, as though this is a natural occurrence for him. “You told me you liked the zoo.”

“Yeah,” Shouyou says, “but you don’t.”

“I never said that,” Kageyama says, brows knitting together. “I said that animals didn’t like me, not the other way around.”

“Oh,” Shouyou says. Then he places a fist over his chest, saying, “Well, then today’s going to be the day I make sure that animals no longer hate you.”

“You don’t need to do that, Hinata,” Kageyama tells him, slightly wincing. “I’ve tried for years now, it’s hopeless. Just—enjoy yourself.”

Shouyou rolls his eyes. “I’m not gonna be friends with animals who hate my best friend,” he says. “This is the Hinata Shouyou guarantee. Animals are gonna love you by the end of today.”

“Sure,” Kageyama says flatly. “But don’t get upset when it doesn’t work. I’m warning you.”

“Oh, hush, you nonbeliever,” Shouyou says, picking up a map from the stack. He unfolds it, eyes peering over the different exhibits to visit. “Hm,” he says. “Where do you think would be a good place to start our mission? What animals do you think hate you the least?”

“I don’t think that really matters.”

“Well, what about we try the aquarium first? It sounds really fun, and there could be—” His eyes widen as he reads over the words, and he nearly drops the map. “Oh my god, Kageyama, it says they have a lucifer dogfish! Do you hear me? A lucifer dogfish! I can’t believe it, are you listening—”

Kageyama flicks his forehead. “Yes,” he hisses, “I heard you. Stop being so loud, people are staring.”

But Shouyou remains undeterred. He grabs Kageyama’s arm and starts running in the direction of the aquarium. “Come on, we gotta go see it! And you need to take a picture of me with it so I can send it to Tsukishima and rub it in his face! He’s gonna be so jealous!”

Shouyou almost runs into the glass doors, but Kageyama pulls him back in the nick of time.

“Be more careful, dumbass,” is all he says before opening the door to let them both in.

They enter the exhibit, and their whole world immediately turns varying shades of blue. There are fish tanks everywhere, one after the other, each to be seen and each to be loved. There’s a tank right above their heads, too, so they can see the fish swimming above them. Little lights illuminate the path they’re supposed to take, and Shouyou gawks at each one of the tanks.

“Look at that one, Tobio! It’s so cute, and it’s orange with small yellow spots, it looks so gwahh, do you think they sell it at the pet store?” Shouyou says excitedly, grinning at the tiny fish swimming by. Others like it follow suit, and he presses his face to the glass to get a closer look. “So cute.”

“It looks like you,” Kageyama says. Then his ears turn pink at the tips, and he opens his mouth, stuttering, “Not the cute part—it’s just—it’s orange, like your—like your hair.”

“Oh,” Shouyou says, smiling. “Well, I still think it’s pretty cute, right?”

Kageyama looks off to the side, a hand covering his mouth in embarrassment. “I guess,” he mumbles.

Shouyou laughs. “Come on, we still have to find that lucifer dogfish. Maybe if we’re lucky we can get a picture of it on top of my head.”

He rolls his eyes, but moves along with Shouyou. They work their way through the different exhibits. Shouyou points out the funny-looking ones and names them, and he ends up with a tiny list of new friends. They even find a pufferfish all blown up, and it’s a bit scary, really.

(“Kageyama, it looks like you. I think I’ll name it Yamayama-kun.”

“Shut up.”)

After a few minutes, they find the lucifer dogfish eventually, sleek and black and long. It swims along in its tank, along with other fish, and Shouyou tries to get as close as he can as possible. It curls through the water, and behind the rocks before reappearing once more.

“Wow,” he breathes out.

“Yeah,” Kageyama agrees. Shouyou finds Kageyama through his reflection in the glass, just a tiny smile and a fond look in his eyes, softening his features. But there’s something off about the way Kageyama stares ahead, as though he’s looking at the glass instead of through it. Like he’s looking at a reflection, too.

(Like he’s looking at Shouyou.)

“Hey, Kageyama,” Shouyou says, and he pulls his phone out of his pocket to hand it to him. “Take a picture of me, would you? And make it a good one!”

He throws up a peace sign and waits for Kageyama to snap a photo, holding out for the right angle where the lucifer dogfish swims above his head. There’s something fuzzy that unfurls in his stomach as he watches Kageyama fumble with his phone, the furrowed eyebrows and bitten lip. Focused eyes and worn determination, even with something simple as this. Warmth, maybe.

“Thanks!” He grins, and quickly sends it off to Tsukishima as he said he would, typing out a watch out!!! i’m gonna grow taller than you!!!!! before turning his phone off again. “You know, none of the fish seem to hate you,” he muses.

“That’s because all of them are in love with you,” Kageyama tells him bluntly. “You take up all their attention, so they don’t focus on me. You’re too bright.”

“I can’t tell if that was a compliment or an insult.”

“Insult, definitely.”

“Really? I was leaning more of the other way,” Shouyou says cheekily, bumping his arm lightly against Kageyama’s. “Don’t worry, I think you’re pretty bright in your own way, too. Sometimes, it seems like you’re made for the stratosphere, high up in the heavens.”

“Dumbass,” Kageyama grumbles. “Come on,” he says, “there’s still more to see, and I’m already getting hungry.”

He laughs, and lets Kageyama lead this time.

(A little later, after a race to see who could eat the most fries and a trip to the monkey exhibit, they find themselves looking at sea otters. Two of them float together by the edge, eyes closed, hands together, and fast asleep.

“Hey, Kageyama, why do they do that again?”

“So they don’t get lost while sleeping. So that they stay together.”

“Ah.” He takes their lead and presses his palm against Kageyama’s. “So we don’t get lost,” he says simply, smiling up at him. “The zoo’s a big place.”

“Yeah,” Kageyama says, squeezing his hand. “Wouldn’t want to get lost.”)

There’s a photo now, of the two of them, right in front of the aviary. Shouyou holds up a stuffed crow Kageyama had begrudgingly bought him, cuddled in one arm, while the other holds Kageyama’s hand. He’s beaming, eyes squeezed shut, cheeks flushed pink. Kageyama is on the brink of a smile, a halfway mark to it resting on his lips, a matching stuffed orange fish in his other arm. His eyes aren’t looking at the camera, though, like they’re supposed to. Instead, they’re on Shouyou, and there’s that something else still lingering in his gaze, intense, and withstanding even the flash of light.

(Shouyou makes it his phone background. Kageyama hangs it up on his wall.)

They stand on the precipice of autumn, right on the edge of summer and the brink of a whole new season. The air cools down a bit, and the leaves begin their slow descent to the ground, gentle and light. School begins again once more, and Shouyou begins to bundle himself for the incoming cold. There’s something different in the sky on the bike rides to and from school, as though it knows he’s already halfway to the end and it’s preparing itself for it.

It’s a lazy morning and Shouyou rolls himself off of the bed, the sunlight streaming into his room half-heartedly. He yawns, stretching his arms out. Natsu continues sleeping next to him (she’d begged him last night to stay with him, and he agreed because even he knows he might not have that many nights left), snoring softly as beams of light fall on her face. She holds tight to his arm, and it’s with light guilt that Shouyou lifts her fingers and wiggles his wrist out of her grip.

“Nii-chan…” she mumbles. “I wanna hug the sun.”

He smiles to himself. “You’re dreaming, Natsu,” he tells her softly.

She doesn’t say anything else, and Shouyou takes it as his cue to slip quietly out of his room.

His mother is already in the kitchen when Shouyou walks in, quietly humming to herself as she cooks breakfast. She’s been an early riser for as long as Shouyou’s known her, and she’s told him how she loves the watching the sun rise in the early morning. Maybe that’s where he gets it from, too.

“Good morning,” he chirps, sliding himself into a seat across from where she stands.

“You’re up early,” she says, a light smile on her lips. “Does this mean Tobio-kun’s coming over?”

Shouyou feels his face warm, but quickly waves it off. “No,” he answers. “Yes. I mean, sort of. Kageyama’s coming over, if that’s okay, but I don’t think that’s why I’m up early.”

“Of course it’s okay,” his mother tells him. “Natsu loves it when he’s here.”

Shouyou snorts. It had taken months for Natsu to warm up to his best friend, mostly because Kageyama didn’t know how to stop looking so scary around small kids. But it was okay now, and maybe even a little bit too okay, because Natsu adores Kageyama to the point it’s embarrassing. Understandable, sure, he has to admit, but embarrassing.

“And you always look happier when he’s here,” his mother continues, and he lets a blush bloom on his face.

“Okaa-san,” he whines. “You know it’s not like that.”

She laughs softly, and her eyes catch the light, turning golden. “I’m just teasing, Shouyou,” she says. “And about your sleep, well, you’ve always been a boy of summer. Now that autumn’s coming, the air’s a little bit different, don’t you think?”

“Huh?” he asks, tilting his head.

“You have summer eyes,” she says, but it’s not much more of an explanation. “You see things much brighter than other people. Like a whole new set of stars in the sky, or how the wind changes sometimes. The sun always stays the longest in the summer.”

Shouyou only looks at her. “I don’t understand.”

She shakes her head, light on her face. “Ah, don’t mind me, Shouyou. I’m just rambling. Sometimes I don’t think I’m making much sense, either.”

He nods slowly, mouthing the words back to himself. Summer eyes. It sounds nice, even if it feels like there’s something about it he doesn’t quite grasp.

“You know, Shouyou,” his mother says. “Don’t worry about where you’re going, okay? Whether you stay here or go to Tokyo or Osaka or wherever you choose, home will still be here.”

And this, he understands well. “I know,” he says. “But I don’t think I’m ready to make a decision yet.”

“Summer may leave you,” she says, a wisp of a smile, “but you can still conquer the seasons.”

“Toss to me!”

The ball makes its way upward, curves perfectly, and Shouyou’s palm meets it at the highest point. It lands on the other side of the court, untouched.

“Yeah!” he yells, and he rushes to where Kageyama stands, holding up both his hands. Kageyama returns the high five, grinning, and it feels as though the sun’s just come out.

Yamaguchi’s team calls for a time-out; he’s saddled with most of the first years for this practice match, though he does have Tsukishima with him to even things out. Kageyama and Shouyou are playing on the same side, and though their quick is still their deadliest weapon, Yamaguchi is a force to be reckoned with and the deuce is barely moving. It’s a challenge, and it’s absolutely perfect.

“Hey, who’s that girl over there?” one of the second years ask. He points to the side, to a girl standing next to Yachi, looking the slightest bit nervous. Shouyou recognizes her from his grade, but they’re not in the same class. They’ve never spoken, either. Yachi seems to be trying to calm her down, though, but for what, he’s not that sure.

“Dunno,” another replies, “but she’s been here since the first set. Seems like she’s waiting for someone. A confession, maybe?”

“Who do you think it’s for?”

“The way Yachi-san’s talking to her, they must know each other,” he replies. “My bet’s on Kageyama-san.”

Shouyou stops in his tracks, and the ball he was holding falls to the floor with a soft thud. His teammates glance at him, and he hastily picks it back up. His stomach feels really weird all of a sudden, and he almost feels like throwing up. He clenches his fist, and remembers the way a scar traced on his skin from a summer a lifetime ago.

“What do you think, Kageyama-san? Do you know her?”

Shouyou allows himself one quick glance at Kageyama. The setter is staring right back at him, like he’s searching for something. Shouyou’s not sure what he wants Kageyama to find.

Kageyama shrugs. “No.”

The time-out ends. Yamaguchi calls them all back for the game, but Shouyou hangs back, if only for a few moments. He feels like he’s stuck in the minutes still, and the seconds are passing too slowly, almost not at all. Something pricks at his skin, at the thought of Kageyama with a girl, of Kageyama smiling at her—the rare, beautiful kind that has Shouyou’s heart stuttering to a stop each and every time—with all the world’s stardust to keep, of Kageyama accepting the confession and holding her hand, of Kageyama with someone else, someone else who isn’t him.

He doesn’t like it at all.

(And of course, he knows Kageyama receives confessions. He’s been getting them since their very first year, and it has yet to stop. But it always feels wrong, and it’s getting harder and harder to hold down. He doesn’t blame the girls and the boys, not at all, because if anything, they’ve been able to do the one thing he has yet to find the courage to do.)

“Oi, Hinata,” Kageyama calls.

Shouyou doesn’t move, eyes still on the ball in his hands. He feels worlds away. Maybe it’s better if he is, and maybe he won’t have to feel like this there.

“Shouyou,” Kageyama says, softer.

Shouyou looks up at him. “Sorry,” he tells him, dropping the ball to the ground. The others are already beginning to find their positions again. “Yeah, let me just, who’s serve was it again?”

(Kageyama. It’s Kageyama’s serve. And if the girl’s anything like Shouyou, she’ll know to fall in love a little bit more, at the way he jumps to hit the ball, and always, always, finds his mark.)

“Shouyou,” Kageyama repeats, a little louder, voice clear like uncracked glass. He looks at him in concern. “Are you okay?”

Shouyou swallows thickly. He nods. “Yeah, just fine. Don’t worry about it.”

As he runs to his position up front, not looking back at Kageyama. His eyes glance back to the girl—Miyamizu, if he remembers right—and she fidgets where she stands. There’s an envelope in her hands, pink and uncrumpled. His stomach churns again, and he looks away.

(Take your time, but don’t waste it.)

(Except—he wasted it, didn’t he? And now he’s moving away from the minutes, and the seconds are slipping right by him.)

The game continues, and Shouyou misses more than half of Kageyama’s tosses. They barely win due to some reckless mistakes on the other team’s end, but it still feels like a loss in his chest.

“Alright!” Yamaguchi yells. “Time to go home, everyone! See you bright and early tomorrow!”

The team trickles out the door slowly to the club room. He watches as Miyamizu approaches Kageyama, shy and nervous. She says something to him quietly.

Kageyama looks back at Shouyou, still searching.

“I’ll wait for you,” Shouyou tells him, mouth dry. They’ve always walked home together, ever since they found out that their paths were similar up until a certain point. “Take your time.”

He nods, and follows the girl outside. Shouyou frowns, and throws the ball up in the air for a serve. He misses, and tries again. Then again and again and again.

He scowls, frustrated. His serve’s been getting better over the past two years, and he should be able to get it right by now, but why isn’t it working? Stupid Kageyama and his stupid killer serve setting up stupidly high standards. Honestly. It’s just unfair.

He tries not to think about Kageyama’s form on the court, always focused and determined and precise. He never makes any mistakes, each move always so calculated and sure. He holds himself like a king, head held up high and ready to take on the world.

Shouyou also tries not to think about his smile, either, because it’s also the best thing he’s ever seen in his whole life, especially when he thinks no one else is looking. The curve of lips, hairpin-like and graceful, and sometimes all Shouyou wants is to touch. But his laugh definitely gives his smile a run for its money, though, because it’s dorky and adorable. It sneaks past him sometimes, soft chuckles and nervous laughter, escaping him for the whole world to hear. For Shouyou to hear. He wants to listen to it for the rest of his life.

He tries not to think about how Kageyama’s eyes are beautiful, different shades of a storm, a clear sky when the light shines right on him, and his hands, porcelain skin but rough in some edges, calloused but well taken care of. And he makes Shouyou laugh, too, sometimes, in the way no one else can, in the way no one else understands. Will he ever find someone else who makes him feel like that?

And Kageyama’s scary sometimes, sure, but he’s thoughtful when it counts, genuine and honest, the kind of boy who holds out umbrellas for those standing in the rain. Pink clouds against a pale blue sky. And deep down, he’s just an insecure kid with a lot to learn. Not a king, but just a boy who’s just trying to find home.

And Hinata Shouyou might just be another boy who’s falling a little more in love with him.

(He thinks about all these things, anyway.)

He sighs when the ball falls too short of the net, falling to the ground. His shoulders slump forward, and he resigns. He’s definitely not gonna get it right today, so he only hopes for a better tomorrow. Maybe he should come earlier, get in some serves before the others come in—

“You need to match the timing of your jump with your hit,” Kageyama says. He’s leaning against the wall, one hand in his pocket and the other clutching an envelope. Shouyou’s not sure how long he’s been standing there.

“I know that,” Shouyou says, irritated. “But—whatever. I’m done for today.”

Kageyama shrugs and doesn’t say anything else.

“So,” he says, and his voice is too loud, ringing into the walls of the gym, far too big for the space between them. “How did it go?” He moves forward to stand in the doorway, a little past Kageyama. He doesn’t really want to look at him, and his chest feels hollow, ringing out an empty tune. “With Miyamizu?”

Kageyama moves next to him, and they fall into pace as they walk to the club room to get changed. He shrugs. “It was okay, I guess.”

“What does that mean?” Shouyou asks, and he winces at the bitter edge to it. Stand down, he reminds himself, unless you want to give yourself away. And oh, how he’s tempted to.

Shouyou opens the door to the room, and changes out of his clothes quickly. Kageyama does the same, and the silence lingers in between them, a call for words they cannot find. His stomach twists when he thinks about how Kageyama probably won’t be eating lunch with him anymore, now that he has a girlfriend to spend that time with. Maybe he won’t walk home with him, either. Maybe this is the last time.

(You wasted it you wasted it you wasted it you wasted it—)

“What’s up with you?” Kageyama asks, narrowing his eyes at him once he puts his head through his shirt. “You’ve been acting weird since the game. And then you played terribly.”

“I wasn’t—I’m not—” Shouyou stutters out, face growing hot. “It’s stupid, okay? And I’m sorry, about the game. I’ll do better tomorrow. Just forget about this.”

“No.” Kageyama looks at him, stubborn. “No, because we’re supposed to be friends, and friends talk to each other. And I can’t tell what you’re thinking if you don’t say anything.”

Because even their strange sort of telepathy, he supposes, has to have its limits.

Shouyou rubs at his face, and stares straight on ahead. “Did you accept?”

Kageyama blinks. “What?”

“The confession. Did you accept it?” he clarifies.

“Oh,” Kageyama says, looking confused. Then he shakes his head. “No, I didn’t.”

“What?” Shouyou asks. Something inside him gives way, and his lungs expand into the spaces he didn’t know they needed. Knots untie in his stomach, and he finds himself breathing easier. “You—what? Why not?”

Kageyama crosses his arms. “Why would I? I barely even know her.”

“But she likes you!” he blurts out. “And you could’ve gotten to know her.”

He cocks his head. “Do you want me to have said yes?”

“No,” Shouyou says too quickly, and Kageyama gives him a questioning look. “No, I mean—gah, Kageyama, just. You said no.”

He nods slowly. “Yeah.”

Then slowly, Shouyou smiles. “Good.”

“Good?” Kageyama asks and an eyebrow comes up raised. He looks—hopeful, maybe, but Shouyou can’t figure out the sudden light in his eyes.

“Good,” he repeats carefully, “because then you won’t get distracted or anything, especially since the Spring High Preliminaries are getting so close.”

“Oh,” Kageyama says, sounding deflated. Sad, by the downward slope of his tone. “Right. Of course. As if I’d ever let myself get distracted.”

“Yup,” Shouyou says, grinning. He opens the door, and breathes in the fresh night air. “Come on, let’s go home.”

“You’re so weird,” Kageyama mutters. “So many mood swings.”

Shouyou hums as he skips down the steps. He grabs his bike from the railing and holds it steady with one hand, Kageyama walking by his other side. They walk past the school gates, and into the journey homebound.

He sneaks a glance at Kageyama, with the moon on his shoulders. A boy of midnight by all means and reasons, otherworldly that he belongs somewhere nebular. And Shouyou wants nothing more to leave the ground he stands on, to find wings and fly so he can reach the sky, too. To join Kageyama on their quest to find the end of the world.

“Hey, Tobio,” Shouyou says quietly. He keeps his eyes on the stars. “Falling in love sounds kinda nice, don’t you think?”

“I guess so,” Kageyama answers quietly. “But I think it’d hurt a bit, too.”

“Yeah, but isn’t that what it’s all about?” Shouyou says. “You hurt them, they hurt you, but it’ll be okay in the end because that’s what loving someone is all about, right?”

Kageyama looks at him. There it is again: that something else. His heart constricts. His voice is soft around the edges, almost as though he’s afraid to ask, “Then do you think it’ll be worth it? All that pain?”

Shouyou smiles at him, and hopes Kageyama knows not to fear the answer. “I think it is, in the end.”

13. Don’t waste any more time that you already have.

A paper drops onto Shouyou’s desk in the middle of class, folded it half and torn at the edges. Ripped from a notebook with gridded lines, written words for an old routine. He unfolds it carefully, smiling when he reads out the note. A small hey, perfect to start the day.

Shouyou smiles and scribbles out a reply at the bottom. Have I ever told you about the time I got stung by a jellyfish? He flicks it back over to Kageyama’s desk, and the boy opens it without another moment’s hesitation.

He watches as Kageyama’s eyebrows furrow at the question, his mind working through the memories for any sign of jellyfish. Shouyou’s almost certain he hasn’t told Kageyama this, so he waits for the paper to be returned to him.

No, it reads, messy and slanted.

Well, he begins to write, it was the summer I turned nine, and we went to the beach. I was trying to catch jellyfish with my bucket (I was very brave, too, so don’t laugh at me!) but I got stung when I wasn’t looking. There was a scar on my hand for the rest of the summer. It looked like lightning.

(Like your eyes. He scratches this part out.)

Shouyou folds it into a small paper crane, just the way his mom had taught him to, them he sends it over to Kageyama. He tries to get his attention back to the class while Kageyama reads his note, but can’t seem to grasp a single word their teacher is saying. He remembers the way the sun looked that afternoon—hot and dry and pink, the flare of the sun, and the lasting mark of a battle unfinished. Things left undone, a sword unyielding still.

Dumbass is all Kageyama sends in return. Shouyou grins at him, and Kageyama smiles back..

Routine. Just like always.

“You’re writing a list, aren’t you?” Kageyama asks him, suddenly coming into Shouyou’s space and settling into the floor next to him.

He folds the accused piece of paper quickly and tucks it into his pocket. “No,” he answers, but immediately feels bad about lying. “I mean, yeah. It’s a list…or something like that.”

Kageyama looks at him curiously. His eyes glance at the paper. “What are you listing down?”

Shouyou feels his cheeks warm. “Some things,” he says vaguely. His mind flickers to Don’t hold back. Don’t leave any regrets. And if that means telling him, then do it. There’s something else, too, a step he hasn’t quite written down yet but lingers at the back of his mind. He holds it at the edge, and wonders if he’ll ever be able to put it into proper writing.

“What kind of things?” Kageyama questions further. “Is it like—a volleyball log?”

“No, that’s your thing,” Shouyou tells him. “It’s more like—it’s a list of things I still need to do. Some of it I’ve finished, but there are still some things…”

“That you still haven’t done,” Kageyama finishes.

Shouyou nods. “Yeah,” he says, “and I’m a little worried I won’t ever get the courage to do some of it, actually.” He laughs nervously at this, and rubs the back of his neck.

“I could help,” Kageyama offers, and Shouyou’s face flushes red.

“No, no,” Shouyou says, shaking his head. He wants to laugh at the irony of it, and rolls the pen in his fingers. “I don’t think you could.”

“I could try,” Kageyama says, as though it’s simple. He turns to Shouyou, the tip of his ears pink. “If there’s…if there’s anything you need help with, I’m here, you know. I’m here.”

Shouyou smiles warmly. “Thanks, Tobio.”

Kageyama flushes and he ducks under the cover of his arm to hide it. Shouyou catches it, though. He always tries to, because it looks adorable. Like watercolor, unapologetic as it spreads through his face, a healthy color against pale skin.

“Anything for you, Shouyou.”

14. Fly!

“Once more!”

From across the court, Kageyama locks eyes with Shouyou. Go, Kageyama says, it’s time. The scoreboard tells them that it’s 24-22 in their favor, and all it takes is for one more point for the game to be theirs. For them to become the representative that goes to Nationals. And Shouyou’s the one who has to deliver the final blow.

(Because as much as it’s a weakness, it is also their greatest strength, and everyone knows that when backed into a corner, Kageyama Tobio will always, without fail, toss to Hinata Shouyou.)

Do your best jump, go as fast as you can, and fly. I’ll get the ball to you.

Shouyou runs to the other side, lightning quick, and he jumps as Kageyama’s fingers touch the ball, shooting towards him. Shouyou sees it coming, finds that empty space between the blockers’ arms, and hits it with all the force he can carry. The ball bounces off the libero’s arms before falling to the side.

A whistle blows.

Karasuno wins.

Shouyou yells, fist in the air before running over to where Kageyama stands and tackling him in a hug, causing both of them to fall over. He laughs, loud and bright, and his lungs are bursting, arms clinging to Kageyama’s shoulders, tears in his eyes. He can hear the roar of the crowd behind him, and his teammates fall around them like the leaves in autumn, all smiles and tired grins. He raises his arms to high five each and every one of them, meets Yamaguchi and Yachi for hugs, and finds Kageyama’s hand tightly held in his.

Kageyama’s beaming at him, proud and real, and Shouyou knows there wouldn’t be anywhere he’d want to be than here, in this very moment.

“We won!” he exclaims. “We won, we won, we won!”

“We won,” Kageyama says, and the light catches his eyes, shiny and starlike. There’s nothing else Shouyou can focus on.

And all their effort has paid off today, all the criticisms and all the consequences no longer matter. It’s not enough to say they’re flightless crowd anymore because they’re more than that now, and they’ve touched the skies to prove it.

“Thank you for supporting us!”

They take their bows and receive their medals during the awarding ceremony, heads held high and cheeks flushed with pride. Shouyou touches the metal, feelings its ridges. We won, he thinks again, even though he knows he’ll never be able to forget this. Reach for the skies. They’d done just that, haven’t they?

And of course there are still more games to play. There’s no way he’s stopping now. It all leads to Spring High, to Nationals, where they can finally take number one and claim it as theirs. It’s all so close.

“Ah, Hinata, Kageyama, it looks like someone’s looking for you two,” Yamaguchi says, and he points to a well-dressed man standing over to the side. There’s a logo that he carries on his shirt, and Shouyou’s stomach drops to the floor when he recognizes it. He’s a university scout.

His hands itch to find Kageyama’s.

The man approaches them with a kind smile, and he talks to them about his school, about how it needs excellent players like you two and our team is consistently in the top five in Japan. He hands them brochures, talks about all the courses they have, and tells them to email him if they have any more questions.

“I hope to see you soon,” he tells them warmly before walking away.

Shouyou stares at the paper in his hands. “Hey, Kageyama, did that really happen? Am I dreaming? Can you pinch me? Did we really just get scouted? By a Tokyo school? Oh my god, that happened, didn’t it? You and me, scouted, that’s so woah—”

“Will you go there then?” Kageyama asks tentatively. He shifts his weight, and he’s staring at Shouyou intensely. He doesn’t need to say the next question for Shouyou to hear it. With me?

“Of course!” Shouyou says, and he feels proud when Kageyama’s shoulders relax. “Well, I mean, unless we both get scouted by another school that’s somehow better than this one. But wahhh, you heard him, right, Tobio? This is amazing! And it’s in Tokyo!”

And Kageyama smiles at him, and Shouyou can feel all his lifetimes fold into one great big story because how did he get so lucky to be in the one where he gets to stay with the likes of Kageyama Tobio?

Shouyou presses a light kiss to Kageyama’s cheek, chaste and quick. “Thank you,” he says, finding all the honesty he can muster.

Kageyama’s eyes widen, already pink. His hand comes up to his cheek. “What—what for?”

Shouyou smiles at him. “Everything, I think.”

“Dumbass,” Kageyama says, and he places an arm over Shouyou’s shoulders in a sort of half-hug. Softly, he whispers, “I should be the one thanking you.”

“Let’s call it even, then,” he says. “And we’ll see where it takes us.”

“Kageyama?” Shouyou looks at the clock on his desk, and it tells him that it’s half past two in the morning. Kageyama almost never calls, especially not at the strangest hours. “What’s wrong?”

There’s only silence at the other end, followed by a sharp intake of breath. His eyes search the dark, and he wishes he could see the boy on the other end.

“Shouyou,” Kageyama breathes out, soft and exhausted and hell, it’s as though Shouyou’s name is his last defense against self-immolation. Like he is his own catalyst for cataclysm.

“Tobio?” Shouyou says, quickly becoming concerned. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Do you need me to come over—”

“No, no, I just,” Kageyama says, voice hoarse. A sniffle, an exhale. A beat. “Can you just talk, please? About anything? I just—I just need to hear you.”

“Sure, of course,” Shouyou says, and he hopes Kageyama knows he means I’ll be here until you need me. “About anything? Even if it’s dumb?”

“Anything,” Kageyama confirms.

“Okay,” he says, sitting up properly. He stretches out his legs. “Okay. My mom said something weird to me a while back. She said I had summer eyes. What do you think that means? She was talking about how it was like seeing a whole new set of stars or something. Just imagine that, Tobio! Wouldn’t that be really cool, if there were even more stars in the sky? Yachi told me there were like a billion of them and that we can’t see most of it, so I guess it’s already pretty true. It’s still a weird thing to say, though. Sometimes I forget the sun’s a star, too, because it seems so different. But I guess it really isn’t? It just seems brighter, and we can see it during the day time. Oh, that reminds me! Didn’t they say that one day the world would get consumed by the sun? That would mean the end of the world. Hm.”

(If it was the end of the world, who would you spend your last day with?)

“That’s…kind of scary, actually. The end of the world. The end to everything, the final finale to everything we know. To everything that exists. People, plants, animals. All of it. And we’d get no say in it because we can’t stop it. It would all be over, just like that. Game over. No second chances, no do-overs. I think that’s what people really mean when they say life’s short. Because, uh, the entire world might not end if just one person dies, but their world does. Does that make sense? You only get to live once, and that’s why they always say to make the most of it. That you shouldn’t be afraid of anything and leave no regrets. Maybe that’s what’s really scary. You know about my list, right? It’s almost winter, and there’s still so much I haven’t done. I know you offered to help, Tobio, but well. I don’t think this is something you can help me with, exactly. But don’t worry about it, okay? Don’t worry about me. I think I just need a little more time, but I’ll get to it eventually. Maybe soon.”

Shouyou laughs lightly to himself. “Sorry, I think I’ve said more than you asked for. Do you…do you feel better?”

It takes a moment, but then Kageyama speaks, barely above a whisper, “Yeah. Thanks.”

Shouyou smiles. “I’m glad. You get grumpy when you’re sad.”

“Tch.”

He laughs. “Seeing you sad makes me a little sad, too, so I’d rather see you happy, okay?”

“I‘m not sad,” Kageyama mumbles. “Not anymore.” With another shaky breath, he says quietly, his voice so painfully small, “I had a dream, and I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

“Oh,” Shouyou says, before realizing he should probably say something more than just that. “Hey, you know I’m not gonna leave, right? I’m here. I’m always here.”

“I know,” Kageyama says. “And that’s why I—” he stops suddenly.

“Kageyama?”

“Nothing,” he says, though there’s an edge to it. “It’s nothing. Just. Thank you. I’m sorry for keeping you up.”

Shouyou hums. “Don’t apologize, it’s okay. I’m happy I could help.”

“Good night, Shouyou.”

“Good night, Tobio.”

15. Don’t you think it’s time?

Autumn peels itself away to make way for winter, the cool air slipping through the cracks of windows and under the doors. Snow begins sprinkling down from the sky, a blessing white stars to grace the ground. Blue skies, with the wishful hope of a better year to come.

The warmth of a bed whispers sweet nothings into his ear, a flirtation he cannot deny, and Shouyou burrows more into his blanket. He knows he has to get up eventually, though, because he’s supposed to meet with Yachi and Kageyama for tutoring, but it’s so nice to just stay here, and he’s still dreaming about a world where he’s a knight instead, a sword on his back, and oh, Kageyama’s there too, with a bow and arrow…

“Shouyou! Time to get up! You’re almost late!” his mother calls from outside. He grumbles, and the dream disappears completely as he’s pulled into consciousness.

He sighs, and blinks his eyes open. Time to go.

Shouyou gets ready quickly, eating as fast as he can, and then he’s putting his shoes on, a half-eaten piece of bread still in his hand. He ruffles Natsu’s hair when he passes by, and presses a light kiss to his mother’s cheek.

“Bye!” he says. There’s a returning call from the kitchen, and Shouyou takes it as his leave.

He grabs his bike and pedals down the hills, the wind billowing past his face and hitting him hard. It’s not too bad for the morning, though, so he keeps going. The scenery still hasn’t changed from the mountaintops, still beautiful and miraculous. Miyagi, in all its greatest glory and in all it will give him. Miyagi, in all that he will try to take with him. Carry home in the your hands, and it will never leave you.

Shouyou’s already spoken to his mom about it, about the grand adventure that a Tokyo university is, and what it may bring for all of them. She’d been happy for him, absolutely delighted, because now he had a place to go. All he needs now is a place to stay, and he’ll figure that out eventually. Maybe he’ll ask Kenma if he knows about any cheap apartments in Tokyo.

He makes it to the bottom of the hill where he finds Kageyama waiting for him. He’s got his arms crossed, frowning at the ground, morning light shining down upon him. Another hometown adventure, not one of the grander ones quite yet.

“Kageyama!” he exclaims, throwing an arm up in the air to wave up at him. Shouyou slows the bike down to a stop, and he hops off to properly greet him. “Hey!”

“Hi,” Kageyama says, a flicker of a smile. Then he’s frowning again, the usual dip of his lips. “You’re late, though.”

Shouyou rolls his eyes. He holds the bike steady with both hands as they start walking to Yachi’s house. “Only by a few minutes!” he argues.

“It felt like hours,” Kageyama drones, but there’s a teasing glint in his eyes. “Days, years, maybe.”

“You know, Kageyama-kun, if this is your way of saying you missed me, you can just say so,” Shouyou quips, and he dodges the punch Kageyama sends his way, laughing.

“Dumbass.”

“Bakageyama.”

“Stupid.”

“Idiot.”

“Shorty.”

“Mean—ah!” Shouyou sneezes, once, twice, sniffling. Then he shivers as a chilly wind blooms past, tickling his ear with a whisper he doesn’t catch. “Mm. It’s cold.” He sneezes again.

Kageyama looks at him. Then he unfurls the scarf around his neck and wraps it around Shouyou’s. “Dumbass, you should’ve put on more layers—” Kageyama removes his gloves and hands it to him, “—or you could get sick or something. Freeze to death, maybe. Then you won’t get to play volleyball or do anything anymore. I told you last night, didn’t I? I told you it was going to be cold. Dumbass.”

Shouyou blinks at him, mouth half-covered by the scarf around his neck, warm from contact. I like him, he thinks suddenly, so much. He can feel his cheeks turning pink, but it’s not from the cold. There’s a tugging in his chest, right to where Kageyama is. I probably love him.

Oh.

Something settles in his bones, like the calm that washes over him split-seconds before he knows he’s about to hit a really good spike. He feels at peace, somewhat, and there are butterflies, but their fluttering is gentle, like slow rain. They’re making up for lost time, taking flight.

He smiles at Kageyama, mouth peeking through the scarf. “Thanks, Tobio!”

16. Yeah, it is.

Later, when Shouyou writes two more things on his list. With a shaky breath, he tells himself to fulfill them the very next day.

“Hey, Yachi? How did you know it was time?”

“Well, just think of it this way—if somebody loved you, wouldn’t you like to know they did?”

Shouyou flicks his spoon upward, and points it at Kageyama. “Think about it. What if there was a parallel universe where I was taller than you? Now, that would be amazing.”

Kageyama snorts, and he takes another bite of his own ice cream. It’s milk-flavored, his favorite kind. Shouyou had come over with it and some chocolate ice cream for himself earlier, in thanks for letting him stay over for the night. “That would be a very far universe, then. A one in a billion chance.”

Shouyou rolls his eyes, but remains undeterred. “What if you were actually the shortest in the team in that universe? Kageyama Tobio, the short setter of Karasuno, and his ace Hinata Shouyou, two meters tall! Ha! It’s hilarious!”

“Real funny,” Kageyama deadpans.

“Hmm, but I don’t think anything else would change besides that,” Shouyou says. Kageyama gives him a questioning look, and he takes another scoop of ice cream. “You and me, I mean. You’d still be you, scary face and all, and I’d still be me, the best volleyball player in all of existence. We’d still be best friends and stuff, though. I’d make sure of that.”

“Really?” Kageyama asks.

Shouyou nods. “Yeah! I don’t think things would be half as fun without you.” He picks at the tiny nuts mixed in the chocolate, and doesn’t look back up at his friend. “You know…I’m just glad to have met you, that’s all.”

He nods. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Me, too.”

There’s a lull that settles between them, a moment of silence that they’re pulled towards. Shouyou’s heart beats in his chest when he remembers the paper folded in his pocket and the words written upon them, waiting for another pair of eyes to see. He glances at Kageyama, obliviously eating his ice cream, and wonders what his response will be. Something good, he hopes.

He puts the empty cup of ice cream down and falls on his back. There are a few glow in the dark stars, spread evenly throughout the ceiling. He’d helped Kageyama put those up in their second year—they’d been a Christmas gift from him, actually—and he’s happy to see there still up there. Man-made constellations, a nice reminder of the world beyond the four walls. Nebulous and untouchable.

Shouyou sees the picture of them at the zoo, too, right up on Kageyama’s wall across the bed. The sun on their backs, the rest of the world blurred behind them. The positioning makes it the first thing Kageyama must see when he wakes up, and his cheeks warm at the thought.

His mind wanders back to parallel universes, and there must be one where Shouyou finds the courage he needs. There must be one out there where he’s done it, where he’s said the words, let his heart spill out for boys like midnight to see. There must be one where he didn’t need to make a list to know it; there must be one where he said it the moment he knew. (And maybe there’s one where he never meets a certain setter at all.) A lifetime of infinite possibilities, good and bad and all that there is in between—but it is here where he is now. Lightyears or seconds away, it’s this lifetime he’s in.

And no matter how many days are left, no matter how many seasons he conquers or how many that leave him, this is where he is. This is where he and Kageyama are together.

He closes his eyes and lets out a breath. It is time to tell Kageyama Tobio.

“Kageyama,” Shouyou says, and he sits back up. He’s said this name many times before this, along with different variations for different affections, a thousand melodies to string along one note, but none of them feel so momentous as this one.

Kageyama, toss to me!

Kageyama, wanna race?

Kageyama, we won!

He exhales again, and steels himself. “I want to show you something.”

Kageyama blinks in surprise. As though he senses the gravity of it all, he sets down his own cup of ice cream. He inches closer to Shouyou until their knees are touching, legs crossed, and the bed creaks at the shift in weight. “Okay.”

Shouyou takes out a piece of paper from his pocket. “This is my list,” he says, holding it up for blue eyes to catch. “I think it’s time I finally show you what I’ve written.”

Kageyama’s eyebrows furrow. “Hinata, you don’t have to—”

He shakes his head. “I want you to. It’ll—it’ll help me cross something off it.”

Kageyama looks confused but takes the paper from him with careful, gentle fingers. He sees the tiny inscription on it from where it’s folded. A small hi in his own handwriting from months ago. “Hey, isn’t this mine?”

“Yeah.”

Kageyama doesn’t question it further, and Shouyou doesn’t let himself feel embarrassed. He unfolds the paper and reads the words at the very top out loud, “Things to do before graduation,” he says. “An ongoing list by Hinata Shouyou.”

Shouyou nods. “Keep going.”

“Hold on to whatever you can,” he continues. Then a small smile rises on his face as he reads the next one. “Go to nationals, and don’t stop until you reach the very top. You’ll finish this one soon enough.”

“Definitely,” he says.

“Buy some pork buns for the first years, because it’s what the third years before you have always done,” Kageyama says, his mouth making a small ‘o’. “So that’s what that was all about. I heard Yamaguchi talking about it.”

“Right,” Shouyou says, and he swallows thickly. “You don’t have to read it all out loud, you know. Just—tell me when you get to the end.”

Kageyama nods. He keeps going, his eyes skimming over the words Shouyou has spent months on, each one a reminder of an occasion. He holds his breath as he watches the setter read, and counts his moments before he reaches the last thing he’s written so far.

“And if that means telling him, then do it,” Kageyama says. “What does that mean?”

He tries for a smile, and the nerves are beginning to kick in properly. “You’ll see.”

Kageyama hums, and keeps going. He’s almost done. Just a little more further.

Shouyou starts counting the stars on the ceiling. He knows there are twenty-one, but does it anyway to keep his mind focused on something else that isn’t the boy in front of him. One, two, three, he counts, hold yourself together.

“Don’t you think it’s time?” Kageyama reads out loud. “Time for what?”

Shouyou tries to calm his heart. Here we go. “Read the next one,” he says as bravely as he can.

“Yeah, it is,” Kageyama says.

“The one after that.”

“Tell Kageyama Tobio that you—oh.” Kageyama’s eyes snap up to meet Shouyou’s. His cheeks are a faint pink. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Shouyou says. And he knows not to be afraid, because it’s Kageyama, and before anything else between them, there is trust. On and off the court, there is an unbreakable bond between them, and if the fight back in their first year couldn’t break them, then nothing can. Because it’s Kageyama, and he understands Shouyou more than anyone.

17. Tell Kageyama Tobio that you love him.

Kageyama blinks. Softly, he says, “You do?” And his voice is hopeful, dangerously so, and he keeps his eyes straight on Shouyou’s. A deep midnight on a night far from summer. The look that tells him there’s something else there.

“I do,” Shouyou says, and it is taking everything inside him not to fall apart just then from the way Kageyama is looking at him like he hung all the stars in the sky. “I love you, and I want to be with you.”

Kageyama stares on, unblinking. Then he looks away, the back of his hand coming up to hide a blooming smile. “Dumbass,” he says, “I was supposed to confess first.”

“Oh,” Shouyou says. He grins sheepishly. “Sorry?”

Kageyama shakes his head, still tied together with a smile, before pressing their foreheads together, his breath ghosting right over Shouyou’s lips. “Can I…?” he whispers, and Shouyou nods.

Kageyama kisses him, and Shouyou wonders why he hasn’t ever kissed Kageyama before this, why he waited so long. It’s soft and slow and sweet and it tastes like milk and chocolate. It tastes like nights under the moonlight and halos from the sun on their shoulders, grass on a tired evening lit by fireflies, and earned victory on their tongue. And there is nothing poetic about how their noses bump more than once or how it is far from perfect as much as first kisses go, and Shouyou would like to find the proper words for it to describe, but maybe there isn’t truly a way to vocalize how coming home feels like.

“Hi,” Kageyama says when they pull apart, face flushed like a sure-fire sun, but smiling all the same.

“Hey,” Shouyou says, and his hand finds Kageyama’s. He lets himself remain in that moment a little longer before asking, “I guess that means you’ve helped me complete two things on my list already.”

“Two?”

“Yeah,” Shouyou says. “Didn’t you read the next one?”

“No,” Kageyama tells him, and he picks the paper back up to read it. “Oh.”

18. Kiss him, even if it’s just once.

“Just once?” Kageyama asks. He puts the list back down, and places his other hand to hold Shouyou’s jaw, his touch feather light but still there, a constant. “Wouldn’t you like to do it again?”

Shouyou blushes, and tries to hold his ground, but a smile slips out anyway. “But wouldn’t we be doing it out of order then? You still haven’t answered my confession.”

Kageyama smiles, shaking his head. Then he looks back at Shouyou, and finally, finally, Shouyou understands exactly what that look means—that elusive something else, a conundrum that he’s no longer afraid of. “Shouyou,” he says, “I love you, too.”

And then Shouyou kisses him, letting himself fall backwards, smiling against Kageyama’s lips. He lets himself fall in love all over again, and this time he knows to stay.

19. Be someone worth remembering. Shouyou tries to do this every practice meeting, skirting around their kouhai to give tips and pointers, hopeful enough to leave a legacy behind. Karasuno’s Little Giant, not the first, and maybe not the last either, but the one who made it farther than the rest. He teaches what he knows—what he’s learned from the ones before him, skills embedded in his bones, memories in his muscles. He’s proud of their team—always has, and always will be—and what they’ve accomplished.

“—you’ll know you hit it right when hear the ball go swoosh! and it’ll be amazing!” Shouyou exclaims to one of the first years, a promising wing spiker.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Tsukishima comments with a disapproving click of his tongue. “That’s not advice at all.”

“You just don’t get how awesome it is, Stingyshima,” Shouyou fires back, sticking out his tongue.

“What a shame,” Tsukishima deadpans.

“Yamaguchi, Tsukishima’s being mean again!”

He rolls his eyes. “No, you’re just being dumb as usual.”

“Nice, Tsukki!” Yamaguchi says.

Shouyou huffs and crosses out his arms. “I thought we were friends!”

Yamaguchi laughs. “We are,” he says back, and he takes Tsukishima’s wrist. “Which is why I’m going to save you the trouble and take Tsukki with me to practice some blocks.”

Shouyou grumbles out a half-hearted retort, and Yamaguchi shakes his head. Tsukishima follows after him, and soon the two are in a smooth-flowing conversation together, not for prying ears to hear. Shouyou watches as Tsukishima’s expression softens, just the smallest bit, as he listens to what Yamaguchi’s rambling about, the stars in his reach. The moon, and the way it orbits around an embodiment of the stars themselves. Lightyears pulled together just to find one another.

And Shouyou knows that time will pass the same way it always does; that even the sun and the moon and all the space in between will forget about him. Time goes on and on and on without ever stopping, seconds into minutes into hours. Infinite lifetimes, inevitable endings. Days filled with moments, each connected, and somewhere along the way he too will get lost in their pattern. No matter how many spikes he hits, how many points he scores, he will turn into just another memory, another name to think about in the fuzziest of daydreams. And no matter how much you try to make the most of it, the worst and even the best of them will be forgotten eventually. Another has been thrown to the whirlwind.

There is no stopping the way time spins the world, and the best you can do is hold on for the ride. And so, he brings out the list and adds something more.

20. Or at the very least, be somebody to someone.

“Kageyama did mention you were writing a list,” a voice says, and he turns to find it belonging to Yachi. She sits down next to him, placing her clipboard in front of her. There’s a list of expenses and upcoming practice matches on them, a few doodles sprinkled over the corners. “Turns out he was right.”

“Yeah,” Shouyou says. He has no qualms about letting her see it—she’s the one he went to when certain feelings emerged in the first place, after all—and she hums as she breezes through the messy handwriting, reckless hopes to finish before the year ends. There are a lot of smudges now, and it’s slightly crumpled at the corners, erasure marks with faded pencil traces. “What do you think?”

“It’s good,” she says after a moment, a loose smile tugging upwards. “It’s a really good idea, Hinata. And it seems like you’ve accomplished some of them, too.” She looks at the last few sentences curiously. “Does that mean you’ve told him?”

Shouyou grins, and glances at the aforementioned setter. Kageyama’s got a watchful eye on a first year he’s training to become the team’s starting setter, and he gives a few comments here and there, smiling to himself when the boy gets it right. Proud, for what he’s leaving behind.

“Yeah,” Shouyou answers, and Kageyama’s eyes turn to his direction to meet his. He smiles, fond and shy at the edges. “Yeah, I did.”

“That’s great!” Yachi exclaims, and she embraces him lightly, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m really happy for you.”

“Thanks, Yachi,” Shouyou says. Thank those who have helped you, again and again and again. “I really owe you for listening about all this stuff. It must’ve gotten really annoying.”

“Yeah, well, you listened to me gush about Kiyoko-chan, so I think we’re even,” she says, and pink traces her skin lightly.

“How is she, by the way?” Shouyou asks.

“She’s visiting this weekend!” Yachi says excitedly. “We’re planning on going to Misaki-chan’s party together—did you hear about that one? All third years are invited, as a last Christmas together kind of thing. It’s on the twenty-third. You and Kageyama should come. I’ve already told Yamaguchi about it, and he said he’s going to try asking Tsukishima if he wants to go.”

“Hm,” Shouyou says thoughtfully. It would be nice to spend some with other people in their grade, and he’s got other friends outside the club he’d like to talk to. And it could be fun. It’s almost not a question for him, really. “Yeah, I think I’ll go,” he says, and Yachi beams. “I’m not really sure about Kageyama, though.”

“Try asking him?” she offers. “Tell him I’m asking him if it’s not enough. Though I doubt it—as long as you’re the one asking, he’d do anything.”

Shouyou snorts and shakes his head. “Kageyama? He never does anything I tell him.”

“It might seem like it, yeah,” she says. “But he listens to you more than anyone, too. You’ve got him wrapped around your finger.”

He colors at that. “I’ll try,” he says.

Yachi nods, and she stands up, picking up her clipboard along with her. She’s grown gracefully into the roll of team manager, carrying an aura of maturity and sternness when the time calls for it. She holds out a hand to help him up, and he takes it.

“Now get back to practice,” she tells him, a teasing smile playing on her lips.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and he throws her a lazy two-salute before heading back into the court where Kageyama’s waiting for him.

(And maybe he won’t mind being forgotten all that much for what he was—that shrimp player, Karasuno’s Number Ten—as long as he’s got at least a few people to remember him for who he really was—Hinata Shouyou, the boy who learned to fly. )

Shouyou pants heavily, and his hands find his bent knees, trying to keep himself upright. The air is cool, but sweat glistens on his forehead, and little puffs of air come out as he breathes. His heart is hammering in his chest as he tries to steady himself, wearing a loose grin like a trophy.

“I won,” he says in between breaths. “Now you owe me pork buns every day for a week.”

“That wasn’t the deal,” Kageyama says, but Shouyou knows Kageyama will do it anyway. His breathing coming just as hard as wipes at his forehead. “And you cheated.”

“I did not!” Shouyou insists, hands coming up to his hips in a poor attempt to hold his ground. A smile peeks through anyway, tilting his head to look up at Kageyama with cheeky grin. “Kissing you on the cheek isn’t cheating. I was just being affectionate, Bakageyama.”

“Not when you do it and then call for a race,” Kageyama says with an eye roll, and his face is red—a mixture of the cold, exhaustion, and embarrassment. “It’s cheating. You got a head start.”

“Well, we’re already here,” Shouyou says, and he gestures vaguely to a house a couple feet away. “That’s Yachi’s friend’s house.”

“How fun,” Kageyama deadpans.

Shouyou takes a loose hold on his wrist and tugs him along, swinging their joined hands in between them, and the cold air scatters with each movement. Shades of blue color the night sky, and he can hear the beat of a song coming from the house, shadows moving behind the windows.

“Hey, you’re gonna be okay, right?” Shouyou asks just as they step into the front porch. Blue chipped wood stares at him back. “With all the people?”

Kageyama grunts. “Yeah.”

“Don’t worry, I know you can be emotionally constipated sometimes,” Shouyou says, and he laughs when Kageyama bumps his shoulder against his, trying to get him to lose his balance. “But you’ve also got me, so if you ever wanna leave, you can tell me.”

Kageyama nods, and Shouyou takes the way Kageyama’s fingers find his to be a sign of gratitude.

When he opens the door, they’re greeted with the sight of several people at once, dancing colors, and the loudness of music. Shouyou feels Kageyama stiffen next to him, so he takes the lead and pulls him through the crowd at the door, stopping only when they’ve found an area with less people.

Kageyama leans into Shouyou’s side, and the tenseness off his shoulders slowly peels away.

“You okay?” he asks again.

“Yeah,” Kageyama breathes.

“Okay,” Shouyou says. He looks around, trying to spot any familiar faces. He recognizes a guy as the captain of the basketball team, another girl from his class, a girl who’s known as the best hand-wrestler in their grade, and two more guys from the swim team. It takes a moment for his eyes to catch light blonde hair, and Shouyou moves towards that direction instantly, tugging Kageyama along with him.

“Yachi! Shimizu-senpai!” he calls excitedly, waving his free hand high up in the air.

Yachi spots him and comes towards him, eyes shining. “You came!” she says. “Hi, Kageyama!”

Kageyama nods in greeting, his hand coming up for a small wave.

Shouyou turns to Shimizu. “Ahh, it’s so nice to see you!” he says. “How’s college? What is it like? Is it as fun as playing volleyball? Have you spoken to Sawamura-san and Azumane-san and Sugawara-san? How are they?”

Shimizu smiles lightly. “I’m glad to see time hasn’t removed your hyperness,” she says, and Yachi laughs at that. “College is fun, but definitely not as fun as watching your games. As for the others, it’s been a while since I last saw them, but we’re all planning to come watch you guys at Nationals.”

“Ooooh!” Shouyou says. “Please do come! We’ll make you proud! Right, Kageyama?”

“Right,” Kageyama says. He stands up a little taller.

“Good luck to all of you,” Shimizu says, and Shouyou watches as she links her hand with Yachi’s. “And don’t worry too much, no matter what happens, we’re always going to be proud of you. The other guys are always talking about how they miss everyone.”

Shouyou nods, and he feels like conversations like these are meant for more solemn moments instead of crowded parties. Still, he holds the words closely to his chest, hoping it doesn’t slip between the cracks of his fingers.

“Thank you,” he says, and Kageyama echoes it.

Yachi and Shimizu leave a few minutes later, off to catch up with their other friends. Kageyama gets thirsty, so he tells Shouyou that he’s going to be looking for milk in the kitchen. Shouyou takes the time to talk to his other friends, skirting around the party and chatting aimlessly with those he knows, smiling bright and laughing well. People wish him good luck for their upcoming matches, which he takes gratefully.

“We’re going to make it to the very top!” he announces loudly, holding a fist to his chest.

“Oi,” Tsukishima says, disrupting the sound of cheers, “don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“Eh?” Shouyou asks. “But we really are going to make it to the top! And aren’t the hardest promises the most important ones, anyway? That makes them even more special when they’re kept!”

“You could afford to be more optimistic, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi offers, and he grins at Shouyou. “That’s an order from your captain.”

“And as vice captain, I second that,” Shouyou adds.

Tsukishima narrows his eyes, but he can never stay mad at Yamaguchi for long—or ever, really, so it’s mostly directed at Shouyou. “Make sure you keep it then,” he says.

“Duh,” Shouyou says back.

Yamaguchi pulls Tsukishima along, and Shouyou spots a conveniently placed mistletoe hanging above their heads. Tsukishima, because of his height, seems to notice it first, but doesn’t say anything until the other does. A few words are exchanged before Yamaguchi’s fingers curl around Tsukishima’s collar to pull him down for a kiss. Huh, Shouyou thinks. No wonder Yamaguchi’s been so happy lately.

That reminds him of Kageyama, so Shouyou makes his way to the kitchen. He finds his best friend leaning on the counter, a half-empty glass of milk next to him. Shouyou slides in front of him, back pressed against the kitchen island.

“Hey,” he says. Then he points to the milk. “You didn’t finish it yet. Is something wrong?”

Kageyama shakes his head, his cheeks blooming, spreading from his neck and all the way upwards, coming in waves. “I was—saving it for you.” He picks up the glass and holds it out for Shouyou.

“Oh. Thanks,” he says. But before taking a sip, he freezes, and looks at Kageyama with wide eyes. “You didn’t poison this, did you?”

Kageyama crosses his arms, his precious mortification gone to hold a deadly glare. “Why would I poison it?”

“Uh, because you want to kill me?”

“I don’t want to kill you,” Kageyama says slowly.

“Oh, that’s good,” Shouyou says, relieved. He takes a slow slip, and he feels a milk mustache form above his lips. “Hey, hey—how does my mustache look?”

“Stupid,” he says flatly.

“Mean, Tobio,” Shouyou says, and he downs the rest of the milk in one go, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m glad you’re okay, though.”

Kageyama raises an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I dunno,” Shouyou says, rolling his shoulders back. He holds the glass in his hands up to his face, and tries to peek through it. It’s a bit blurry on the other side, and Kageyama’s head looks funny. “I guess I was just worried you’d freeze up or something? Since there’s so many people around.”

You were worried about me? Kageyama seems to want to say by his open mouth, but he closes it shut after a moment of hesitation. He’s always been better with actions, though, so he steps forward to eliminate the space between him and Shouyou, until there’s only millimeters keeping them at bay.

“I was, a bit,” Kageyama admits quietly. “I don’t really like being here—or parties at all—but you make it better. You make it easier, and it’s like I don’t care about anyone else at all. Just you, and you’re here, and you make things okay.”

Then Kageyama kisses him, a little off the mouth, but he rights it quickly. Shouyou smiles against his lips, and he touches Kageyama’s cheeks to pull him a little closer, standing on his toes to press harder.

“I’m glad I got to help,” Shouyou says when they let go, cheeks flushed and lips red.

Kageyama hums, pressing his forehead against Shouyou’s. “Me, too.”

“Can I stay over when we get home?” he asks, interlacing their fingers together. “We can watch some movies or play video games or stay up and talk.”

“Talk?” Kageyama asks, a teasing glint in his eyes. “About what?”

“I don’t know,” Shouyou says, already feeling heat in his cheeks. “I talk enough for both of us sometimes, but maybe I’ll do all the listening this time, if you want.”

Kageyama nods to consider it. “That sounds good.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a date then,” Shouyou says, and he takes delight in how Kageyama blushes again. It’s adorable.

“A sleepover for a date?” he asks.

“Exactly,” Shouyou answers, grinning. “Oh! We could have a pillow fight, too! Or build a fort! And have midnight snacks!”

Kageyama rolls his eyes, but nods along, amused. “It sounds like the perfect date.”

“Of course it will be,” Shouyou says. “Because it’s you and me, and everything we do is amazing!” It sounds like an echo of a promise back from the beginning, of invincibility and togetherness and being here. Shouyou marks it around his heart, keeping it there for safekeeping.

“Right,” Kageyama agrees.

Shouyou kisses him then, shorter than the last but just as meaningful. He’ll never get tired of the way it feels like electricity is shooting through his veins, his lungs caught in a frenzy they can’t escape. His heart welcomes the butterflies, says hello like old friends. It keeps the door unlocked.

“Merry Christmas, Tobio,” Shouyou says quietly, leaning forward to rest his head on Kageyama’s shoulder.

“Merry Christmas, Shouyou.” Kageyama holds him close, and doesn’t let go for a long while.

21. Celebrate the new year with high hopes.

“We’re going to take Nationals,” Shouyou says one afternoon, with the winter light fading down on them from the window. He’s seated in between Kageyama’s legs, typing away on his phone as Kageyama rests his chin on Shouyou’s shoulder.

Kageyama wraps his arms around Shouyou’s waist. Breathing in, he says, “Of course. I’ve never believed otherwise.”

22. Show the world all that you are and all that you could be.

Let’s see how far we’ve come.

Karasuno enters Nationals with reckless determination and an insurmountable amount of force, taking center stage quickly and gathering attention from all over the country. They play each match like it would be too risky to even think about letting go, a dangerous mix of unpredictability and synchronization to throw each opponent off. Unstable power, held together by trust and familiarity.

Shouyou knows what the other side looks like well enough by now, and he wants to keep looking like it’s an addiction. Friction against his feet, bright lights above his head. Center stage for the finals, heat in his hands, a ball spinning in the air. The last fight, the final battle. To win or to lose, to reach the heavens or fall back to the ground, and Shouyou knows where he wants to be.

All the way to the top.

He falls back to the ground as the ball gets blocked on the other side of the net, gravity reapplied. The scoreboard adds one for Karasuno, finally freeing them of their deuce, rally after rally. Shouyou yells, once more! and they’re so close it’s almost painful.

Watching him come up for the serve, Shouyou realizes that Kageyama Tobio is something like a storm.

He is the crackle of lightning, the continuous rumble of thunder, and the peculiar way the rain hits the ground like drumming. His eyes are of the sea, deep and quick to change—midnight to sky blue in a matter of seconds, crystalline to cobalt in a flicker. He is a rainstorm, dangerous in the making and hard to catch, unpredictable at best and an unstoppable terror at worst. He is the flash before it hits, the unshaken promise to always come back, for hell to rise and for kingdoms to fall. He is the whisper of the wind before the witching hour and the goodbye before the dawn. He is the last phenomenon standing at the end of the world, and it is best not to get caught up in its exhaustion.

But on other days, Kageyama Tobio is of the quiet edge, an oddity of the silence, a ruler of the way no sound escapes at the most tranquil moments. He folds up in on himself, shrinks away and keeps to the anticipated beats, a drizzle and light rain for the spring. He becomes distant, as the gray clouds scatter and the light grows, the breaking of sunbeams to dance along. Something a house of cards would not even fall to, faint but still persistent, a soft plea of its being. He becomes just a boy and no longer the storm to fear.

(But maybe this is also the deadliest kind, the unexpected downpour that leaves nothing behind in its wake.)

“Go killer serve!” he shouts, and he watches as Kageyama tosses the ball up in the air, and it hurtles at terminal velocity to the other end, their opponents unmoving as the ball hits the ground. A service ace, at its finest.

Kageyama serves once more, but it no longer throws their opponent off, and they receive it. Shouyou catches the ball when it gets back to them, and tosses it over to Kageyama. The setter throws it up, and Tsukishima spikes it, unblocked. Another point.

They keep going and going and going, eyes always up and never down, and both scores increase as the seconds trickle past. Shouyou ingraines each movement to memory, each touch of the ball and each fall, because this is something he will never get back. This is his last high school volleyball game, and to hell with it if he isn’t going to win.

The way the crowd yells his name when he pulls off another successful quick— push it, push it, Shouyou!—and the way they all hold their heads up like heroes. They crash through block after block, knocking down the walls to break through. A game for the centuries, one to be remembered. And for a moment they’re not players on a court, but kings of it, unafraid and daring.

Shouyou’s never had more fun in his life. He wishes he could do this forever.

His heart hammers in his chest as they score another point to break a deuce. Kageyama’s eyes catch him from the other end of the court, and he knows what to do with clarity. He lets their Yamaguchi receive the ball before backing up, eyes wide and ready to go. The perfect run-up to his highest jump. He runs, Kageyama tosses the ball to him, and he finds a spot between the blocks.

(There goes Karasuno’s Hinata Shouyou, vice captain and ace! That boy’s come a long way, you know, I heard he only played one match back in middle school and he lost it, too. He was also a little rough around the edges back in his first year, could barely do the basics, but that quick of his and Kageyama’s—it’s always been the main event! And you can see how much he’s grown, it’s amazing! There must be a lot of weight on his shoulders, so let’s see if he can pull it off! This is it, folks, the final question: can Hinata make this last point? Will this be what leads the team to victory?)

Shouyou hits the ball as hard as he can.

It falls the ground.

The whistle blows into the stunned silence before everything erupts into chaos. The crowd goes wild, and the announcer yells something over the speakers—Karasuno High School takes the number one spot at Nationals!—but all Shouyou can hear is the final fall of the ball.

They won.

They won.

Shouyou finds all the other third years immediately, all arms wrapped around each other, tears running down their faces and holding so tight that none of them can really breathe. They fall to the ground, all five of them, and Yachi is telling them how proud she is, but her words come out in a warbled mess subdued by tears. Shouyou lets out a laugh, a really good one, because he’ll miss this more than anything in the world, because now it’s all over and they won. It feels so good, like he’s flying. He’s finally flying, weightless, and gravity can never bring him down. Somehow, Kageyama’s hand still finds his in the mess, squeezing it tight, and grinning with all the light’s wonder.

The rest of team comes to join their huddle, and they cry and laugh together until it’s time to be awarded, suppressing grins and holding back sobs, feeling entire lifetimes fold into this one. There is nothing related to fate about this one, Shouyou knows, because they all worked hard and practiced until their limbs were sore, and they deserve it. After all they’ve been through, this moment is finally theirs.

Victory is sweet on his tongue.

Trophy in their hands, Karasuno thanks the audience for their support. A million faces in the crowd cheer them on as they take their bows, medals around their neck as a remembrance, a token of pride, and Shouyou lets the metal rest above his heart.

Because this is not goodbye to volleyball, not yet. He will still keep playing, past high school club activities and into university teams. He and the other third years have promised to keep going to practice to help the underclassmen, and Shouyou isn’t going to let go just yet. This isn’t goodbye, he knows it isn’t, because there’s still much more left in store for him. This isn’t goodbye, it’s a see you later, and a promise to keep on coming back. This isn’t goodbye, because Shouyou won’t ever let it be one.

Their old senpai meet them at the entrance, all eight of them with shiny eyes and nothing but pride in their voices. Shimizu, Kinoshita, and Narita hold up the best, keeping their voices controlled and calm as possible. Nishinoya and Tanaka tackle Shouyou and Yamaguchi the moment their sights are on them, enthusiastic and talking about how our little baby crows are all grown up. Kageyama gets his hair ruffled by a teary Sawamura, and Sugawara and Azumane can barely keep their sobs to themselves, hugging each member and making sure they all know just how proud we are, you guys are the best, and we’re treating you all to ramen!

(“Actually, never mind, I’m broke,” Sugawara says after he’s finished wiping away his tears. “Daichi, you’re paying for everyone.”)

Kageyama disappears for a moment before they board the bus, so Shouyou assumes he just went to the bathroom and waits for him outside. The rest of Karasuno's alumnae have gone ahead to the restaurant to reserve some seats, and their bus so scheduled to follow after them. Coach Ukai claps Shouyou on the back as he gets on the bus, you’ve come so far, kid on his tongue, and his eyes shimmering. Shouyou grins, and thanks him for everything.

When Kageyama does show, he’s got a piece of paper in his hands and he’s frowning. Wordlessly, he hands the paper to Shouyou and enters the bus. Shouyou follows after him, and doesn’t look at the paper quite yet, waiting for himself to get seated.

It’s a brochure for a foreign university. There’s a post-it note with a number written on it, and Shouyou turns back to the glossy paper. The university’s well-known for their sports endeavors and extra-curriculars, the top four best school when it comes to volleyball in the world. His gut twists when he realizes what this means. What it means for Kageyama, and that they’ve scouted him— chosen him.

(And he’s always known Kageyama was made for greater places, for bigger cities and grander stages. Geniuses are always going to reach higher than the rest, they’ve been built to take first place, hardwired to never stop. Kageyama’s always been meant to go to farther places, to places unreachable, to places where distance couldn’t be overcome. He’s always known this, but dammit, if he wasn’t going to try to get there too.)

He opens his mouth to speak, hands shaking. Most of the team are already fast asleep. Kageyama holds up a finger to stop him.

“Before you say anything,” Kageyama says quietly, “I want you to know I’m not going to take it.”

“What?” Shouyou asks. “But Kageyama—Tobio, this is huge! Fourth best in the world! You’ve got to go!”

Kageyama smiles sadly and shakes his head. “I can’t.”

“What? Why? It’s the perfect opportunity! Why wouldn’t you want to? Unless—” Shouyou’s eyebrows furrow until he realizes what Kageyama means. His eyes widen, and he looks straight at Kageyama. “No. No way. Tobio, no, don’t you dare. ”

Kageyama shifts so he’s sitting up straight, and for a moment it seems like he’s carrying the sun on his shoulders, the glare of sunbeams through windows casting bright flares. He meets Shouyou’s eyes properly. “I dare.”

“But—but you can’t!” Shouyou tells him frantically. “You can’t give this up! Not for—not for me. I won’t allow you to. Just watch—maybe I’ll apply there, too, instead, and then you won’t have to turn them down—”

“Hinata.”

“—so don’t be stupid for once, okay? You’ve got to go there—”

“Shouyou.”

Shouyou stops.

“Do you really want to get rid of me that easily?” Kageyama asks, but the joke comes out flat. He sighs, and stretches his fingers out, each of them taken well care of and in perfect condition. “Listen, I’m not turning them down for you or because of you. I know it’s a great opportunity, and this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, but so are you. You’re the best damn thing that’s ever happened to me, and I wouldn’t have gotten this far in volleyball if it wasn’t for you. So I owe you, and if it’s okay, I’d like to stay with you, no matter where it is.”

(You’re the phenomenon I’m glad I got caught up in.)

Shouyou hiccups. “Even if it’s not as great of a school?”

Kageyama nods. “Even if it’s not as great of a school, we’re going to make it the greatest. You and me.”

“I just don’t want you to end up regretting it,” Shouyou says quietly. He leans into Kageyama’s side, and the setter puts his arm over Shouyou’s shoulders. “This could help you go pro. It’ll be better for you there.”

“But I’m best with you,” Kageyama replies, his hand finding Shouyou’s. He gives it a squeeze. “And I don’t think I’d want to go out of Japan alone, anyway. I can barely form a sentence in English.”

Shouyou lets out a small laugh at that. “I can’t believe you got scouted internationally,” he murmurs.

“They told me they gave this opportunity to Oikawa-san, too, and they didn’t say, but I think he chose somewhere else,” Kageyama tells him. The Grand King, Shouyou remembers, with his terrifying focus and unwavering determination on the court. “I think we have similar reasons why. Setters tend to focus a lot on their aces, you know.”

Shouyou smiles despite himself, and presses further into Kageyama, letting his warmth seep through past the cold outside. “Okay,” he breathes, finally, and he feels Kageyama relax next to him. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” Kageyama says, and there’s no hesitation in his voice. But his voice wavers when he says the next part, “And as long as you’re still okay being with me?”

“Yeah,” Shouyou says, and he reaches up to press a kiss to Kageyama’s cheek. “I’m sure, too.”

“Good,” Kageyama says, and he rests his head against Shouyou’s.

“Okay, sappy time’s over now,” Shouyou says, stifling a yawn. “Happy times only. We won, remember?”

“Yeah,” Kageyama says, and he presses a kiss to Shouyou’s hair. “We won.”

The bus drives on, all the way to the ramen shop, and Shouyou finds comfort in the way the rest of the world allows fate to let him win.

23. Have as much fun as you want.

It starts like this:

Tsukishima asks Yamaguchi if it’s okay that he comes with him to the grocery to get some things his mom asked for. Yamaguchi tells Yachi—because bless her soul, she’s the one both he and Shouyou go to when their love life takes on something new—and Yachi tells Shouyou in excitement, and Shouyou tells Kageyama because that’s what he does. That’s how they all end up at the grocery store.

It ends like this:

“Yamaguchi, the aisle! Watch out for the aisle!” Yachi screeches, yelping when Yamaguchi takes a sharp right to avoid the stack of cans. She lets out an exhale. “That was so close.”

“Sorry,” Yamaguchi says, out of breath. “You guys are heavy, please know that.”

“Onward!” Shouyou yells. “To aisle ten!”

“Can we go back to get more milk?” Kageyama asks. He squirms from where he sits in the grocery cart, and his legs are dangling off the side. He holds two cartons to milk to his chest, cradling them like they’re his children.

Yachi sits next to him, face slightly green from the rush. “And can we go a bit slower? I think I’m going to get sick.”

Shouyou bounces on his toes. He’s holding onto the very front of the cart, his feet on the bottom railing and hands at the top. “To the chips!” he says, louder this time. “And the candy!”

“You’re already way too hyper,” Yamaguchi says exasperatedly. He has the unfortunate job of pushing the cart. “Fine, we’ll go to aisle ten, but after that we’re leaving.”

With a groan, Yamaguchi pushes his three friends along. He nearly runs into another stack of bottles, but moves in the nick of time. Shouyou shifts his weight as Yamaguchi takes another turn. Kageyama swipes another carton of milk off the shelf, his arm darting in and out quickly.

“Be careful!” Yachi says.

“Why do you guys have to be so heavy?” Yamaguchi mutters. “Ugh, I get that we have to keep in shape since we play a sport, but come on.”

“It’s the muscles!” Shouyou says.

“Dumbass, what muscles?” Kageyama retorts.

“These!”

When he lifts an arm and attempts to shove it in Kageyama’s face, he loses his footing and nearly falls off. He pulls the cart with him, and it’s too far to the left now, and Yamaguchi is shouting. They crash into a bunch of cereal boxes, cardboard falling from the sky and onto their heads. Shouyou groans; there’s a box of Tikachu cereal spread over his lap, and by his sides. Kageyama looks glazed, his milk spilt on the floor, and Yachi seems like she’s on the verge of throwing up.

Yamaguchi shakes his head, rubbing at his stomach. “Well, this was a disaster.”

“We should, uh, probably leave before someone catches us,” Shouyou suggests, and he brushes off the boxes and tries to stand up.

“Yeah, that’s…that’s a good idea,” Yachi says, and she claps a hand over her mouth. She gets up quickly, her words muffled, “Bathroom now. See you guys later.”

Kageyama stands up as well, and the three of them try to walk away from the mess as discreetly as possible. Shouyou tries not to laugh at the absurdity of it all—three teens on the verge of adulthood who somehow make it rain cereal boxes. They get some weird looks, but Shouyou hides his laughter behind his mouth, and Yamaguchi’s face is flushed red. Kageyama mourns the loss of his milk, walking behind them.

Shouyou grins up at them. “We should do this again sometime.”

“No,” Yamaguchi says gravely. “Never again.”

(Somewhere on the opposite side of the grocery, Tsukishima pays for his groceries and swears up and down that he doesn’t know the idiots who made a mess on aisle twelve.)

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Yamaguchi says, voice on the edge of precaution, “but Kageyama’s been receiving a lot of chocolates today, hasn’t he?”

Shouyou watches as Kageyama’s stopped mid-serve and called to the door where a group of girls stand, blushing and nervous. One of them stands at the front, and she holds out a box for him—and the rest of their nosy team—to see. She says something Shouyou can’t hear, and Kageyama takes the box, nods appreciatively, and turns around to pick up where he left off. The box of chocolates remains on the bench, just like the other ten that had come before it.

“If you say so,” Shouyou says, shrugging. Unlike last time, he doesn’t feel bad anymore. Kageyama’s always received a lot of things on Valentine’s Day, and it didn’t really decrease even when word got out that they were together. “I mean, I guess he is pretty. Scary sometimes, but pretty.”

“Hinata, you’re dating him.”

“Yup,” Shouyou says, grinning. He lowers his voice for only Yamaguchi to hear, “Which is why my chocolates are gonna be the best ones.”

“You haven’t given them to him yet?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “I thought you said you’d give them first thing in the morning.”

“I was, but then he came in late,” Shouyou explains. He was waiting for Kageyama to come in all morning, but he only showed up halfway through their first class, and he hasn’t had a proper chance yet. “So I figured I’d just give them to him after practice.”

“Well, practice is almost over,” Yamaguchi says, eyes glancing at the clock. There’s ten minutes left. “You should go ahead and try.”

“And you’ll give yours to Tsukishima?” Shouyou asks teasingly.

Yamaguchi blushes. “Yes,” he says. His eyes dart to the other end of the gym where the middle blocker is helping one of the first years with his technique. “Deal?”

“Deal.”

Shouyou grins at him as Yamaguchi calls for the end of practice, clapping his hands for everyone’s attention. They all scatter and head for the club room, tugging off sweaty shirts and chattering aimlessly among themselves. Shouyou feels for the box inside his bag—still intact and ready to be given. He holds a breath, there’s nothing to be afraid of, absolutely nothing to be nervous about, because it’s just Kageyama, and he already knows how Shouyou feels. Nothing to worry about.

“You guys go ahead, I’ll lock up,” Shouyou says to Yamaguchi. The captain shoots him a thumbs up, a good luck in earnest, and Shouyou nods in return.

When the rest of the team leaves, Shouyou turns to Kageyama, and takes a deep breath.

The setter is going through his bag, filled with boxes and bags of different shapes and sizes, muttering quietly to himself. Shouyou wonders how many girls and guys had the courage to give them, and what they must be feeling. He’s never really given anything more than obligatory chocolates, and this one is special.

“So how many did you get this time?” Shouyou asks, taking a step closer. “A million? Two million?”

Kageyama huffs and rolls his eyes, but his expression is fond. “Around thirty,” he says. “I lost track after lunch. There’s one of them I want you to see.”

“Really?” Shouyou asks, and he watches curiously as Kageyama digs through the bag, pulling out a red box decorated with tiny drawings of the sun all over it.

Kageyama hands it over to him, the other coming up to rub the back of his neck. “Here,” he says, pointedly looking away to fight back the color rising on his face. “This one’s for you.”

“What? But someone gave this to you, didn’t they?” Shouyou asks, but he takes the box, looking at it a little closer.

“No,” Kageyama says sheepishly. “This one’s, uh, this one’s from me. To you.”

Shouyou’s eyes widen. “Oh.”

“That’s—that’s why I was late today. I was trying to bake, but I’m shit at it, so a lot of things went wrong, and I hope they still taste good. I’ve never done this before and I know we’re already together, but I wanted to give you something,” Kageyama says in a rush, turning redder by the second. “So. Here.”

Shouyou doesn’t waste another moment before hugging him, burying his face into Kageyama’s chest, wrapping his arms around him tightly. He stands on his tip toes and kisses all around his face, feeling it warm where his lips touch.

“Thank you,” he says, and he falls back on his feet. “I really, really love it.”

“Yeah?” Kageyama asks.

“Yeah,” Shouyou says, beaming. He turns to his own bag, and digs out his own gift. “And I’ve got something for you, too.”

Kageyama takes the box in his hands, eyes wide and mouth slightly open. There’s a post-it note stuck on top of it, with You make me feel like PWAH and GAHH!!! written on it, and Kageyama smiles, soft and heartwarming.

It’s his turn to hug Shouyou, and the ace lets himself fall into it, tugging at the cloth of his shirt tightly. Kageyama rests his chin on Shouyou’s shoulder, holding him close enough that it seems like he’s planning on never letting go. And if that’s the case, Shouyou doesn’t think he would oppose.

24. Keep on falling over and over again.

“Thank you,” Kageyama says quietly. Then he lets go, but he keeps their hands together.

“You’re welcome,” Shouyou replies, and he presses a kiss to Kageyama’s shoulder, a spot he can reach without standing on his toes. Then he pulls his hand towards the door. “Come on, I think it’s time we went home.”

Kageyama nods. “Let’s go home.”

FROM: Kozume Kenma

SUBJECT: Tokyo

Hey, Shouyou, here’s that list of apartments you asked for, but I think it would be easier if you tried finding a roommate. Hope to see you in Tokyo soon.

[file attached]

It’s a little funny, how things change.

How just in the smallest of ways things are always changing, always shifting, and people learn to adjust without meaning to. How there is always something different and no day ever replicates twice, how the sun always goes down a different second it did before, and the colors it takes with it are just a shade off. Always moving, and sometimes it is impossible to take things with you, and nothing ever goes back to the way it was, nothing ever reverts the same way. There’s always a change in momentum, and you’ll find no answer to the questions that are written on bones and skin. Time and all the oddities it carries with it, and forever is but a concept, because all things must come to an end and an infinity is just a liar fooled too many times. A handmaid for the end.

Seven billion people on earth, a hundred twenty-seven million in Japan, and Hinata Shouyou is just one boy. The chances of people finding each other amidst the way nothing is ever possibly constant, the chances of choosing the same person throughout each lifetime, the chances of being able to stay with them even with the flow of unpredictability life carries with it. A life never repeats twice, no light shines the same way, and no great candle goes out by one breath.

Wouldn’t it be so much simpler if time could stop? If just for a moment, the world stood still and the moments slowed down for you to catch up to it, if it waited and let you come at your own pace? If it waited until you were ready?

But as much as time is a thief, it is also the most selfless giver. It gives all that it has, not holding back, spinning so that people have their days and their nights, their in-betweens and their goodbyes. It grants favors to those who are lucky, adds a little more to those who are worthy. And time is tricky because it’s unable to go back, and the past is only a memory to be written down. How funny it is, that each second only lasts so long, and people count their heartbeats by the minute.

Time is slipping through his fingers, and Shouyou’s not sure if he can catch them all. And no matter what you do, no matter how many dreams you catch, no matter how many times you wish for it, there is no saving what has already been lost. There is no going back to what has already happened.

He blinks his eyes open, stretches out his arms where he lays on Kageyama, their legs tangled together. He rests his chin on Kageyama’s chest, and he looks at his best friend, head propped up on a pillow, and the way the world softens around him.

“Hi,” Shouyou says, voice still a little croaky from his nap.

“Hey,” Kageyama says back. Shouyou can feel his heartbeat under his chin, the rise and fall of his breathing.

“Do you ever think about how someday all that you have will be gone?” Shouyou asks him, and brings up a hand to trace lazy circles on Kageyama’s arm. “That nothing will ever be like this again?”

Kageyama hums thoughtfully, and Shouyou feels the rumble of it beneath him. “Didn’t I already tell you before?”

“Tell me what?”

Kageyama smiles, a dip of his lips to curve upwards slightly, the kind of smile reserved for the privacy of rooms and not for the whole world to see. “That even if everything has to change, I can give you something constant.”

Shouyou smiles, and recalls the memory, fluorescent lights to keep the shadows away. “And what would that be?”

Kageyama reaches over to press a light kiss to Shouyou’s nose. “Us,” he says, “staying together.”

Then Kageyama kisses him properly on the lips, and it feels like the very first time, slow and careful, a touch to hold an infinity’s worth of promises. Because past cityscapes and countrysides, past skyscrapers and mountains, past the stars and the sun, there is together.

And that is the one thing he knows to never, ever let go.

“Hey, Kageyama, can you promise me something?” Shouyou says. For when we reach the end?”

Kageyama looks at him. “What kind of promise?”

“I don’t really know,” he answers, biting his lip. “But the kind that lasts.”

He feels Kageyama take a deep breath. “Okay.”

Shouyou smiles, and curls his fingers around Kageyama’s. “Promise that you’ll stand by me forever,” he says, and he knows it’s a big thing to ask, to want Kageyama to say yes to things that even the stars cannot give him. But he also wants this more than anything, and he wants Kageyama to know that past any lifetime and past any afterlife, he wants to be there with the midnight boy who has stayed, even after all this time. “But if something happens and we can’t, at least—just remember me, okay?”

Remember the way they stole the spotlights, the way the crowd cheered for them. Remember all the walls they broke through, and the stories they shared. Remember the way their first quick was created, mingled with the heat of the sun and the competitiveness that fizzled into companionship. Remember each game, each win, and each loss. Remember how it was inevitable to find each other again, and remember how the sky looked the first time they met—pink and streaked with promises to be fulfilled. Remember the way it felt to fall asleep next to each other, unwilling to let go to someone so close. Remember what it was like to fall in love, and remember that there are some people who you only meet once in a lifetime. Remember that there are people worth not letting go, and remember what it means to stay.

Remember Hinata Shouyou, and how he finally made a quick of the sun.

After a moment, Kageyama sighs. “Don’t be stupid,” he tells him with an honest smile. “How could I ever forget you?”

And Shouyou exhales at his words, lets himself fall apart and to vanish all the ideas of leaving. “Promise?”

“I promise,” Kageyama says, pressing a kiss to his forehead. He lets his lips linger for a moment longer. “I’ll stand by you, no matter what happens for as long as you’ll have me.”

“Then I promise I’ll always want to be with you,” Shouyou says with a crooked grin. “Even when you’re being dumb or when you’re being scary.”

And Kageyama laughs, light and full of happiness. Shouyou wishes he could bottle it up and keep it, just to save it for a rainy day, or when the ground falls from his feet.

“Can’t be any dumber than you, dumbass.”

Shouyou sticks out his tongue in opposition, but a smile breaks through anyway, and he kisses Kageyama again. He hums. “I love you, did I ever tell you that?”

“You’ve mentioned it a few times, I think,” Kageyama says, smiling, close enough for their foreheads to come together, breaths mixing and heartbeats falling into sync against each other. “And I love you, too.”

“Do you want to move in together?” Shouyou asks him, and he tells himself to not be afraid, because he never has to be around Kageyama. “I was talking to Kenma—Nekoma’s old setter—the other day, and he said it’d be better if I found a roommate, but if you already have a place, that’s fine—”

“Yes,” Kageyama says, breathless.

“Oh,” Shouyou says, and he feels himself lighting up. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he answers, cheeks pink. “I mean—yes, let’s do that. Please.”

Shouyou laughs. “We both can’t cook, though, so we’re probably gonna have to live off instant ramen or something.”

“We’ve got time to learn the basics,” Kageyama suggests. “We’ll manage somehow.”

“Yeah,” Shouyou agrees. “With me, you’re invincible, remember?”

“Then I think it’s best if we both stay,” he tells Shouyou, and that look of something else remains, except it’s been a long time since Shouyou finally figured out what it meant.

“Sounds good,” Shouyou says, and he falls back, resting his head. He yawns again. “‘m goin’ back to sleep,” he mumbles.

“Night, Shouyou,” Kageyama says, squeezing his hand.

He closes his eyes, and lets himself rest with Kageyama’s warmth. Spring makes its return through the window as the dreams take him away, and there is nothing for him to fear.

The day before graduation, a small piece of paper lands on his desk. For old time’s sake, he picks it up and unfolds it.

Hi, it reads.

Shouyou looks up at Kageyama and grins at him.

Hey, he writes back, one last time.

25. Let your memories break your fall.

It feels like there should be confetti. Because this is it, the final moment, the end to all grand schemes and elaborate plans. Remember this moment, and remember this feeling, he tells himself, because it will never be like this again.

He’ll miss all these days behind him. He’ll miss the rustle of papers, the rumble over their teachers’ voices to be drowned by sleep, the moments in between classes, the lunch periods, and the relief he felt when class ended. He’ll miss the way the world looked beyond classroom windows, the anxiety that came with tests, the support of friends and the jokes that they shared. He’ll miss this, and tries to hold on still.

The names are read off one by one, kings and queens, standing up before each other. The cherry blossoms are in full bloom, lighting up the ceremony in pink, the perfect way to end the year. Families and friends are gathered all around, tears in their eyes and joy on their faces, a world full of people standing together, a hundred stories to keep with them.

“Hinata Shouyou,” they call, and Shouyou stands up. They hand him his diploma, a this is it in the making, and he smiles brightly at the camera pointed before him. Shouyou raises one fist in the air in triumph, shaking and smiling as wide as he can, pride swelling up in his chest. The crowd cheers for him, congratulations and thank you for all your hard work all in one.

I graduated, he thinks. I did it.

He looks at all the people around him, at all the faces he’s known for the last three years, at all the ones he will remember for as long as he will live. For a somber moment, it occurs to him that he will never see some of these people again—that there will come a point when all there is for them is a name in his memory, a hazy face to pinpoint it. That everyone here will be going off in different paths, different directions around the country, around the world. That he will forget them just as they will forget him, that some friends will drift off to become strangers, that laughter will be something harder to come by. He will never see some of these people again in his lifetime, and they will never see him.

(Immortality can only get you so far. This, he knows.)

There’s a dull ache in his chest when he thinks about it, but he swallows it down. He knows there’s no way he can hold on to all of it, and that the people who matter the most will be the ones to stay. So he takes it all in, and tries his best keep everything close to his chest.

(Hold on to what you can, but—)

26. Learn to let go.

He starts at the beginning.

He remembers his first day, running to the second gym like his life depended on it, meeting Kageyama again. He remembers meeting most of the team already, people with dreams larger than life, aspirations to reach the top. He remembers building it all from the ground up.

He remembers their first true loss, Seijoh standing tall and proud in front of them, heads held high. He remembers fighting with a trusted partner, angry and frustrated. But he also remembers learning something new and calling it their own, he remembers falling back together and trying again. He remembers winning, the relief and the pride. He remembers Shiratorizawa, and what it meant to be a split-second stronger.

He recalls Nationals, reaching the top but not quite, being there for the very first time, the digital scoreboards and the electric buzz that consumed him whole. He remembers what it’s like to be a team, to stand strong and face opponents greater than them. To know they didn’t need it, but to want it anyway; to have the choice to walk away, but knowing deep down that they could beat this. He remembers that clearer than anything.

He remembers second year and falling in love, a crush blooming under the surface to unfold, a first love for the ages. Unforgettable, the whirlwind of being unrequited, the shy looks and the bold moves. The almost confessions and the feelings that didn’t seem to go away. He remembers it, and wonders if it was because he didn’t want them to.

He remembers playing even more games that the year changed without him noticing, from his second year in high school to his third, to change of winter back into spring. He remembers making a list, of writing things down in attempt to remember. To feel complete, and to leave with no regrets. He remembers how he’s not done yet.

He remembers a proper I love you, kisses on the cheek, on the lips, late night phone calls, and a promise to stay together. He remembers Nationals and the way it felt to finally be the best ; he remembers finally making it to the very top without being afraid of falling. He remembers making it to this very day, all the days blurred in between, his own personal countdown. He remembers where he is, and how much more he has to go.

Shouyou takes a deep breath.

27. And finally, let go.

The ceremony finishes, and after hugs from his mother and sister, he finds Kageyama in the crowd. He runs towards him, jumping up and wrapping his arms around Kageyama’s neck, his legs around his waist, and Kageyama spins him around. Shouyou laughs into the wind, and he kisses Kageyama, beaming.

“We graduated! We graduated, Tobio! Graduated!” he exclaims, throwing his arms up in the air.

“I know, I know,” Kageyama says, and a lighter escapes him, too. “Oi, stop moving so much or I’ll drop you.”

Shouyou just kisses him again and hugs Kageyama again before detangling himself from his boyfriend, and jumping back to the ground. “Ahhh, this is so exciting!” Shouyou says. “I feel so pwahh, this is amazing! I can’t believe we finally did it! We didn’t fail! And we’re going to college! Together!”

Kageyama smiles down at him. “Yeah, we are.”

Suddenly, Shouyou’s tackled from behind, and arms around his shoulders.

“Hinata, we did it!” Yachi says, beaming. She goes to hug him properly. “We did it! We did it!”

“I know! We graduated!” Shouyou says, bouncing on his toes. He lets go of Yachi as she goes to embrace Kageyama, who returns it with gratitude. “That actually happened!”

“Who would’ve thought idiots like you could actually graduate?” Tsukishima says, a wry smile on his lips as he approaches. Yamaguchi is by his side, smiling and happier than Shouyou’s ever seen him.

Shouyou hugs them both, and even though Tsukishima says he doesn’t like it, Shouyou knows he’s happy to be here too.

“Well, none of us failed, so it’s a win!” Yachi says, holding two thumbs up. Her eyes are sparkling in the afternoon sun, her hair golden. “I’m gonna miss all of you guys so much!”

“I think it’s too early for that,” Yamaguchi says. “We’ve still got summer ahead of us before we all leave. Plenty of time not to say goodbye.”

Shouyou grins. “Yup! No goodbyes, not ever,” he says, and he links both of his arms with Yachi and Kageyama. “We can’t miss each other if we’re always together.”

“Sounds like hell,” Tsukishima says, but there’s a light smile on his lips. “But since I’ve survived this long, I suppose I might as well.”

“Aw, Tsukishima cares about us!” Shouyou teases.

“Shut up, idiot,” Tsukishima grumbles.

Shouyou grins back at all of them, his friends, his family, and the wind blows right past them. Cherry blossom petals fall to the ground, streaked in the orange-pink. And they’ve seen many days like this before them, and they’ll see much more of it.

Kageyama nudges his shoulder. “Hey, can you come with me? I need to talk to you.”

Shouyou holds his hand out in front of him, eyes wary. “Is this it? Are you finally gonna kidnap me, Kageyama?”

Kageyama rolls his eyes. “No, dumbass.”

And Shouyou laughs, and he waves the others goodbye before following after Kageyama. And all kidding aside, in truth he knows he’d follow Kageyama Tobio anywhere he asked him to—may it be the end of time or the end of the earth. He could take Shouyou anywhere, and he’d follow headfirst and fearless. And Shouyou wouldn’t mind, as long as Kageyama was with him through all of it.

They stop at a more secluded area, behind the main school building and under the cool shade of the trees. Shouyou leans against the wall, hands in his pockets as he waits for Kageyama to say what’s on his mind.

It takes a while for him to find the words, but Shouyou lets him take his time. After a moment, he says slowly, “I want to give you something.”

“Oh,” Shouyou says, and he pushes himself off the wall. “What is it? A gift?”

Kageyama shrugs. “Of sorts.” He takes something out of his pocket, clutched in his fist. “Hold out your your hand,” he instructs.

Shouyou narrows his eyes, careful. He presses his hand to his chest. “It’s not a bug or something, is it? Is it gross?”

“No, dumbass, just hold out your hand,” Kageyama tells him, but his exasperation is nothing but fond. “It’s harmless. Promise.”

“Okay,” Shouyou says. He opens his palm to the sky.

Kageyama holds his own hand over Shouyou’s, and he drops something into it. It’s something small, judging by the faint fall, and Kageyama moves his hand away for Shouyou to take a look.

“A button,” Shouyou says. Then his eyes snap upward to Kageyama’s uniform, and there’s a missing spot right below the first. “Your second button?” he asks, then the realization dawns on him. “Kageyama, this is your second button.”

“Yes, I know that, it’s why I gave it to you,” Kageyama says, and pink dusts his cheeks. He holds a hand up to try to cover his face. “Gah, Hinata, why’d you make it so embarrassing?”

“Because this is your button!” he exclaims. He jumps high enough that his face reaches Kageyama’s and he kisses him lightly. “Do you know what this means, Kageyama? Do you know what it means?”

Kageyama humors him, smile incredibly soft, “What does it mean, Shouyou?”

“It means you love me!” Shouyou says, and he jumps again, this time to hug Kageyama. “You love me!”

“You already know that, but yeah, dumbass, I love you.” Kageyama laughs, and he lowers his face, close enough to kiss Shouyou, but not yet.

Shouyou takes off his own button, and places it in Kageyama’s hand. “There,” he says. “So you remember that I love you, too.”

Kageyama blinks at him, and it seems as though he’s at a loss for words. Finally, he asks softly, “Can I kiss you?”

“You don’t need to ask, you know,” Shouyou says with a smile, hands coming to rest on Kageyama’s shoulders. “I’m always going to say yes.”

Kageyama hums, his voice a little lower. “I just wanted to make sure,” he tells him, “that you're okay. With me.”

Shouyou puts on a smile of his own before pressing his lips gently to Kageyama’s. It’s a ghost of a kiss, but the touch lingers. “Of course I am,” Shouyou says. “Who else would it be?”

Kageyama comes close enough to touch, and they meet each other by the lips, familiar but exhilarating enough still. They move together in sync, practiced enough times that their noses no longer bump, and Shouyou feels a swooping sensation in his stomach. He wants this forever.

Kageyama lets go. “I’ve still got another thing to show you.”

“Okay,” Shouyou says, and he takes a step back. Kageyama brings something else out of his pocket, a piece of paper. He hands it over to Shouyou, folded in half. “What’s this?”

“Just open it,” Kageyama says, a flicker of nervousness in his eyes, unsure and delicate.

And Shouyou does, nearly dropping it when he reads the words written inside.

THINGS TO DO AFTER GRADUATION

An Ongoing List by Kageyama Tobio

1. Keep your promise to Hinata Shouyou.

They’re the only things written so far, but Shouyou knows that just like his own list was, there’s still more to do. That it’s not going to end just yet. This is only the beginning to so much more, for a lifetime of things to do.

“I know I’m bad at feeling,” Kageyama says, wincing slightly at his own words. “I’m not the best at showing my emotions or talking about them, but I do know how I feel about—about you. And I think I’d like to be with you. For a long time, maybe.”

Shouyou breaks out into a smile. “Yeah, I’d like that, too.” He takes Kageyama’s hand to squeeze it, and smiles at him, for all things solar and all things nebulous.

“And if it’s okay, I think I can help you out with your list,” Shouyou says, swinging their hands as they walk back to where other people are still gathered. “I’ve got a few ideas already.”

“Oh, yeah?” Kageyama asks. “Like what?”

“For one, I think you should write down buy your boyfriend some pork buns,” Shouyou declares, grinning. He smirks and says, “Or maybe you could write kiss the daylights out of him.”

Kageyama rolls his eyes. “Dumbass.”

“Oh! What about take your boyfriend on a date to the aquarium?” Shouyou says, laughing.

“Was the zoo not enough for you?”

“That doesn’t count! We weren’t dating yet!” Shouyou exclaims. Then he freezes, hands mid-swing, and he whirls around to face Kageyama, “Oh my god, Tobio, was that a date and I just didn’t know?”

Kageyama turns bright red. He rubs the back of his neck to look away. “Uh, I don’t think I want to answer that.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Shouyou blurts out, feeling his cheeks burn. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What—why? Why would I have—” Kageyama mutters, and he’s trying to hide his face with his hand. “I didn’t know you liked me back, so I didn’t say anything.”

Shouyou huffs, standing up straighter. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to go again, right? This time, we’ll call it a date for sure.”

Kageyama’s still pink in the face, but he grumbles out, “I guess so.”

He goes back to swinging their hands again, as high as they possibly can go. The sun is beginning to set already beyond the hills, and the day of graduation is beginning to end. Shouyou exhales, and turns upward to the sky.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he says, and the wind carries his voice for the whole world to hear. Shouyou takes his own list from out of his pocket, each one fulfilled, and holds it up to the sky, an offer to the heavens. His life will never be the same, but that’s okay, too. And no matter what happens, he will always carry home with him. Whether it be Tokyo or Miyagi, home will be with him wherever he goes.

You’ve conquered the seasons, the wind sings, and now you are ready to go.

He folds the paper and tucks it back into his pocket, and cups the setting sun with his hands to keep. Just like what he’d told Natsu to do, all those months ago. Kageyama looks at him curiously, but he doesn’t say anything. They watch as the sun sinks behind the mountains, and the moon glows brighter by the minute.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he repeats, and he knows that what he says is nothing but true. They turn to leave the school for the last time, and stars follow them on the walk home.

Hinata Shouyou is a man on a mission.

(In truth, he is a boy who’s still growing up, but those two things look arguably similar under the glare of the afternoon sun.)

Shouyou stands on the shoreline, ankle-deep into the water. He faces the coming of his new life, heading it face on. The waves come and go by his feet, trying to trip him and cause him to lose balance, but he stands steady. Determined and focused, he keeps himself upright. The water is light beneath him, but sunbeams dance on the blue beyond him, shimmering with the sun on the horizon line. His mother still calls him strong, and he still is, a boy of summer with the rest of the world to figure out. He’s got time as his weapon instead of the enemy, hope as his shield, and he wields them well.

But there are no jellyfish this time around, no runaway creatures to sting him unguarded. There is only him, the sea, and whatever lies at the end of the ocean.

Shouyou stands there, the water cool at his feet, and he knows not to be afraid. He knows pride by its name, and there are no scars on his hands, just lessons learned and morals untouched. Many things have changed since he was that little boy with a bucket; his hands are more calloused, his legs longer, his hair messier, all that growing up leads to. But his eyes are still the same—still summer eyes as his mother would call it, brown with gold and the sunshine inside to hold.

Shouyou takes a deep breath.

A voice calls him from the beach. Oi, dumbass, time to go home, Kageyama says, I’m getting hungry. He can hear Tsukishima retorting something to that, and Yamaguchi’s laughter follows. Yachi says something he can’t understand, and he knows it means his time is up.

He looks to the sunset ahead of him once more. He exhales, and lets the last few rays wash over him. He keeps his memories with him, and watches the future play out before him. It’s time.

And when Shouyou leaves, grinning and triumphant, it is because he finally wears the title of master of all the jellyfish.