Archive of Our Own ^beta

The Kansai region—which includes Kyoto, Amagasaki, and Osaka—experiences a rainy season known as tsuyu (alternatively: baiyu). It is written with the characters “plum” and “rain,” as it coincides with plums purpling and plumping. Beginning toward the birth of June and lapsing in late July, tsuyu lasts approximately six weeks. 

—

It is July. Atsumu inhales a breath. 

Upon his tongue, it tastes like morning dew. He’s six years old and senseless, perched beside his twin brother as they wait for the school bus to pick them up. Class begins in just short of half an hour, and while Atsumu isn’t thrilled to be force-fed harmonica during morning music, he is looking forward to afternoon PE.

See, yesterday, Osamu ran his five warm-up laps three seconds faster than Atsumu. This was both humiliating and unacceptable. (Osamu gloated the entire bus ride home and in front of their parents at the dinner table, too.) Now, Atsumu’s ready for a rematch, and he’s out for blood. 

“I’m gonna beat ya in PE, Samu,” he states, adjusting the straps of his red randoseru. “So ya better be ready.”

Osamu doesn’t seem all that nervous about his brother’s assertion. “I’d like to see ya try,” he responds, without bothering to look up. He’s studying the damp vines curled around the column of their house’s front gate. 

It had rained last night. The crackling reminded Atsumu of a dying fire. 

A mechanical screech heralds the arrival of their Pokémon-plastered preschool bus. As the door yawns open, Atsumu and his brother barrel into the vehicle.

It’s not a long ride to the school by any means, but time passes slowly when you’re young. Atsumu rests his temple against the window and thinks about PE—about that nameless, beautiful feeling that blossoms in his chest when he wins. He wants to catch hold of it. Desperately.

The bus soon creeps to the curb of the school. 

Music class consists of crude noise and countless corrections on his playing, but Atsumu is eager enough for PE to persevere through his artistic embarrassment. (His mother often points out that there are plenty of musicians who cannot sing well; having prowess in one area, like sports, does not guarantee prowess in others. Talent is not ubiquitous.) 

By the time the Miya twins shuffle into the gym, Atsumu has already double knotted his shoelaces. Are ya ready, Samu? he thinks to himself, giggly. 

“Ya already asked me that this morning, dumbie,” Osamu snarks, letting Atsumu know he has unintentionally spoken aloud again. 

Flustered, Atsumu takes off a split-second late on his five warm-ups laps, trying to outrun his thundering heartbeat and his brother. 

It’s a close race, but Atsumu loses. He sulks during the bus ride home and while they scribble stories at the kitchen table and over a dinner of oden. Osamu laughs and laughs the whole while just to add insult to injury. 

This preschool PE loss sets a precedent for the next five years: Osamu is first, and Atsumu falls short. The flowers of approval are inked just a bit larger on his brother’s homework than on his. The notes of Osamu’s harmonica are a smidge closer to being on key. He can jump rope for thirty seconds longer. 

Osamu is stronger, faster, and better than Atsumu overall. And it’s irritating. It’s really, really irritating.

In fourth grade, the word “volleyball” has measurable weight. But on a drearily normal spring day, the plates of everything shift. It goes like this:

Atsumu and his brother are at a skills workshop for local volleyball teams. They’ve learned the ropes of the sport, but their positions are far from being set in stone. For no reason in particular, Atsumu catches sight of an older player halfway across the large gym. The player eyes the volleyball falling toward him, assesses, and then launches it right into the palm of a waiting spiker. Leather smacks rubber-coated wood loud enough to deafen. 

The pattern is one Atsumu has witnessed a dozen times, but today, it feels like watching a gift be received. It feels like Christmas. And Atsumu stands in the middle of that too-big gym with his too-big heart and decides that he wants to be that kind of player. He wants to be a setter.

From this point on, the word “volleyball” starts having volume. It takes up more and more space. 

In retrospect, Atsumu can’t remember what color jersey the older boy was wearing, or whether his hair was brown or black, or anything like that. What he does recall, though, is the boy’s concentration. Focus tinged crimson with confidence, and love, too.

But pure desire isn’t powerful enough to overcome skill. Only effort can do that. It’s logical that Osamu gets the honor of being their team’s setter because he’s more skilled than Atsumu. It’s logical, but it still stings. 

The only way to cease this smarting—resolve the dissonance, feed the want—is to get good. So Atsumu practices. He spends hours in the front yard blurring a blue and yellow ball until he can feel it against his fingertips before it hits his skin. He memorizes the dimensions of it; he maps out its seams. Cartography and choreography, again and again. 

Soon enough, Atsumu is their team’s designated setter. This should be everything he’s ever dreamed of, but it’s still nightmare-adjacent. Even with such a dutiful setter, his teammates are insolent. If not that, they’re apathetic. Atsumu knows that there is a view only to be seen by those who sacrifice everything, and he resents his teammates for being blind to it. His team isn’t enough. 

If his team isn’t enough, does that mean he isn’t enough either? 

Atsumu is folding this thought like a piece of paper when his brother proclaims, unprompted, “Ya know, everybody hates ya.”

The two are eating a lukewarm meal of rice, salmon, and miso soup that does little to satiate Atsumu’s undying hunger.

“So?” he says, around a mouth of half-chewed food. Thirteen-year-old Atsumu doesn’t need friendship or warmth. He needs respect on the court, and he puts his life on the line to earn it every day.

Osamu blinks. Then he goes back to scarfing down the contents of his plate. 

They don’t speak about the comment after that. Atsumu thinks about it, though, long after his brother is drooling into his pillow and the stars are winking in the sky. 

“Everybody hates ya.”

And it’s true. Atsumu’s teammates don’t like him that much. Maybe they don’t like him at all. This truth, in itself, is not a revelation of any kind. It is shadowy yet unmistakable, like figures behind shōji. But it’s not hard to avoid the cream-colored paper that brackets the Miya household’s tatami room. It takes only a few muscles, Atsumu reckons, to avert his gaze from the hushed arguments his parents are having behind the thin doors. 

At thirteen years old, Atsumu is becoming quite accustomed to revelations that don’t sweep him off his feet. At thirteen years old, while lying stiff-spined on his futon, he doesn’t make any grand changes to his attitude. He doesn’t cry or get down on himself either. He does sit with a cloying awareness, though, but about what, he cannot say.

Atsumu is good at hiding, but sleep eventually finds him below the balmy thrum of rain. He has practice tomorrow. One thing at a time. 

High school is not nearly what it’s chalked up to be in coming-of-age films. There are no parties, classroom pranks, or surreptitious nights out on the town. And that’s fine with Atsumu, honestly, because he has no interest in getting blackout drunk on vending machine beer and then whooped by his mother. There is only one thing that Atsumu wants, and it is the same thing he has wanted since grade four. He receives until bruises mottle his forearms. He serves until his palms bleed. There is volleyball, and there is volleyball. 

May trips over its feet and collapses into June. Amagasaki’s rainy season is a kept promise. 

The clouds look like they’re ready to swallow Inarizaki High whole and then cough up the bones. The Miya twins are nearing the end of their first term of high school. This is probably an event worth celebrating, but Atsumu isn’t great at paying attention to this sort of thing. Every milestone feels like just another day unless it's related to volleyball. There is nothing more and nothing less to it. 

“Tsumu, ya ready to go?” 

“I’m comin’, I’m comin!” Atsumu hollers to his brother. “Just give me a second to get my umbrella.” More than finding any umbrella, though, he’s preoccupied with piecing together fragments of the song Aizawa Kouji was humming at lunch. 

“Ya mean my umbrella?” Osamu scowls. He is standing by the front doors of the school, upper lip curled and foot tapping, as if his brother is wasting his precious time. As if he’s keen on braving the shitty weather. What a sick fucker.

And, sure, the black foldable umbrella is technically Osamu’s, but they’re twins. They’ve been sharing and stealing from each other since they exited the womb, so why worry about technicalities?

Atsumu is still trying to nail the chorus to that song Aizawa was humming, and Osamu is crossing his arms now like some kind of a pompous asshole, and god why is this fucking umbrella so hard to—

In a rash attempt for shelter before stepping into the rain, Atsumu yanks the umbrella handle. Hard. A metal bone pierces the black cotton and narrowly misses his left eye. The umbrella splinters in his hands. 

Shit. Fucking shit. 

“Uh, Samu,” Atsumu starts, hand clutching the fractured skeleton, “I think I might’ve broken it.”

Osamu, who has been watching this entire sequence of events unfold, shakes his head and begins walking into the rain, umbrella damned. “Ya know, yer unbelievable sometimes. Toss that shit in yer bag and throw it away when we get home,” he all but spits. 

Torrents flow down in sheets around Osamu. Water slithers through the veins of the cobblestones, melts the graveled walkways. 

“No way I’m walkin’ home in this monsoon without an umbrella,” Atsumu says, retreating back toward the safety of the school. 

“Do ya even know what a monsoon is? And it’s yer fault ya forgot an umbrella.”

“I had one until it shattered in my hands!”

Osamu says something that sounds an awful lot like, “Everythin’ does,” but Atsumu can’t be sure. 

“The hell did ya say to me, Samu?” he bellows, accusatory. 

“I said,” Osamu starts, cupping his hands around his vicious mouth, “it wasn’t even yer umbrella, to begin with!”

Atsumu bites the inside of his cheek and draws blood as a reward. He’s not walking home in the rain. Not today. “I’m gonna buy an umbrella from FamilyMart.”

Osamu drops his hands and balls them into fists. “The walk home takes, like, fifteen minutes.”

“Honestly, I don’t give a fuck," Atsumu growls, gaze falling toward the dampening steps of the school. Eye contact means Osamu wins. He’s tired of Osamu winning. 

“Well, get going then, ya stubborn ass.”

Atsumu cowers from the rain as he walks four blocks in the opposite direction from their house to the FamilyMart. Osamu keeps pace with him, trudging on the other side of the road. He holds his school bag over his head in a feeble attempt to shield his shitty gray hair from the shitty gray rain. 

The three minutes in the FamilyMart serves as a respite from the violent downpour beyond the windows. Atsumu pays for his dingy clear umbrella with a bright smile. After he crosses the street, his brother greets him with a punch to the shoulder. Then, Osamu fishes out a travel-size umbrella from the nether reaches of his wet bag. 

Atsumu short circuits like a damaged power outlet. “Ya had an umbrella this whole time and didn’t use it?” His shouts echo around the concavity of his clear canopy, bounce back to his ears at the speed of sound. “Ya could’ve given it to me!”

Osamu rolls his eyes. “Yer causin’ a scene, dumbass,” he grouses, as though they aren’t the only ones on the street.

“I don’t care! Why the hell didn’t ya use the damn umbrella, Samu?”

Atsumu expects his brother to snarl back something like, “Because ya would’ve stolen it from me and broken it.”

But Osamu defies expectations per usual. He wrings the rainwater from the strap of his tote, tosses it back over his shoulder, and says, “To prove a point.” 

He’s a soaked, sorry bastard, and he’s won again.

Sakusa Kiyoomi does not initially stand out to Atsumu. How could he? They meet on the court, and when separated by taut netting, there is no regard for individualism beyond noting potential threats. There is Atsumu’s team, and there are his opponents. 

These opponents, Atsumu learns, are good. Like, really fucking good. 

Itachiyama Academy buries Inarizaki High alive and then pisses on their grave. 

They don’t actually do this because that is both very unsanitary and illegal, but they might as well have. The loss sticks to Atsumu like Dri Fit in sweet August heat. 

So, Sakusa Kiyoomi does not initially stand out to Atsumu. But his team demands attention, and there’s value in that.

To say that Atsumu starts working harder during his second year of high school is both discrediting and fallacious. That phrasing implies he hasn’t worked as hard as he could since fourth grade, but he has. He’s been gritting his teeth and giving it his all since he decided why he had to. 

And even so, something or another is disturbed halfway through high school. A threshold is raised, an inhibition is abandoned, a childhood is forgotten. Atsumu is still just a boy when he is seventeen, but he is a different boy than before. He’s finally a part of a team whose want is almost as vast as his. They tolerate his personality, too, giving him real friends for the first time in—ever, really. (Maybe, just maybe, Atsumu hopes his friendships aren’t one-sided.) 

The Inarizaki High Boys Volleyball Team has a national title to earn. Atsumu won’t be the weak link who drags them down. 

His mother can sense his dedication. She’ll come down for a glass of water in the middle of the night and spy him passed out on the living room couch, still in his practice clothes and with a volleyball tucked under his arm. After prying him from the ball, she’ll drive her fist into the couch cushions three times to rattle her son awake, and then she’ll put her hands on her hips. Atsumu will scramble to the shower before he can turn to stone beneath her gaze. And this is how it goes.

Volleyball keeps taking up more and more space. Atsumu cannot sunder himself from it, and it is a given that one of them will eat the other alive.

The Miya twins are two sides of the same coin, in some ways. 

Atsumu doesn’t think much about whether his parents’ marriage is a happy one. It feels taboo to listen in too closely on their wavy conversations, and he's not sure whether this is a cultural factor or a Miya family factor.

Osamu, on the other hand, ruminates what Atsumu refuses to. He has always been the more down-to-earth one out of the pair of them, hugging the ground while Atsumu flies toward the sun, wax-winged and wanting.

So, when Osamu suggests during their second year of high school that their parents are “outta love," Atsumu does not see it coming.

His brother’s phrasing strikes Atsumu as oddly purposeful. “‘Outta love’?” he parrots, trying to make sense of the words. “Like they ain’t in love with each other anymore?”

“Nah, not like that."

Atsumu and Osamu are walking home from a cold evening practice. Bundled in thick winter coats that add five kilos to their weight, winter charily creeps behind them.

“It’s more like if everyone had the same amount of love to start with, and we all kept it locked away in a little jar and only gave it out when we really, really wanted to.” Osamu’s breath billows white in the air. “I think they just… ran outta love to give each other.” 

Atsumu does not know what to say to this, so he says, “Oh. I guess that makes sense.”

The conversation beds itself down after that, and Atumu’s seals away his confusion for the time being. But because Osamu always wins, their father moves out on a July night hot to the touch. Their parents don’t get divorced. 

Atsumu wonders if their father will miss them. He wonders if Miya Hideki considers what he is leaving behind. 

Over the next few weeks, empty jars fill Atsumu's dreams.

The motto of the Inarizaki High Boys Volleyball Team is short and sweet: “We don’t need things like memories.”

To Atsumu, it’s also sacrosanct. He does not need things like memories. Memories are emotional baggage, clunky suitcases with squeaky wheels that should be checked before the next match or restless night. Things like memories only serve to degrade the present. 

In his last year of high school, Atsumu takes Intro to Psychology as an elective. He has to outline an impossible number of studies, but their subject matter is always pragmatic and primal. During November’s cognitive unit, he learns about the model of reconstructive memory. It states the following: each time a person recalls an event, they remember their last recollection of the event rather than the event itself. This leads to memory distortion.

Kawarazaki sensei says that this model explains many big, important things, like misinformation in criminal cases. But for Atsumu, it poses more questions than answers. For the first time in his eighteen years of life, Atsumu thinks about fate. He wonders how free will can be a thing in a world where memories are, without fail, contaminated by time. He wonders how much of his dedication is prescribed by other, greater forces than himself. 

And for the first time in just shy of a year, Atsumu recalls the night Osamu told him he was quitting volleyball after high school.  

“Miya-kun! Miya-kun, over here!”

Atsumu whips his head around, trying to place who among the crowd might have called his name. Identifying the owner of the voice is a vain endeavor. Students, staff members, and every immediate relative of the entire graduating class are spread thick across the vicinity. The Inarizaki High courtyard is jam-packed—seams splitting, buttons bursting. 

Less than twenty minutes ago, Atsumu graduated high school. Three years spun in silver have slipped through his fingers like string. He didn’t sob when he bowed to receive his diploma, nor did his stomach swoop when he saw his father for the first time in eight months. And still, Atsumu does feel rapt with something or another. High school is not nearly what it’s chalked up to be in coming-of-age films, and still, Atsumu thinks he’ll miss it.

(It isn’t because these were the last years he got to play alongside his brother. It’s certainly not because of that.)

“Miya-kun!”

Before Atsumu can fix his crooked tie and muss his gelled hair, he is spun toward a girl he hasn’t spoken to in six months.

Watanabe Mina smiles at him like the moon. “I worried I’d never get to you!” She thrusts a pilot pen into Atsumu’s right hand and holds out a leather book. “Would you be willing to sign my yearbook?"

“Uh, yeah, it’s pretty damn crowded out here,” Atsumu manages, blindsided before he remembers his manners. “And, of course, I will! We can trade.” He fumbles to give his yearbook, taking hers at the same time.

The pink gel pen Watanabe provides him with looks like it was made for jotting down platitudes. Atsumu scratches in one or two, and then, at the last moment, he adds, “Sorry.”

They exchange their books again, and Watanabe Mina drowns back into a sea of tight button-ups and loose blouses. 

“Hey. Why’d Watanabe-san wanna sign yer yearbook?” Osamu calls, bookended by Aizawa Kouji and Suna Rintarou as he approaches his brother. “You two barely even talked.”

Atsumu fibs through his fangs. “I don’t know. Let’s go find Mom and Dad.” 

It’s true: Watanabe and Atsumu barely talked. Beyond going over test corrections and peer editing papers, they only spoke once. But their single interaction during second year left a handprint in Atsumu’s mind. It went like this:

Atsumu was rifling through his practice bag, looking to see if he remembered to take his practice gear out of his laundry pile. Then, a light prod nicked his shoulder. He wrenched out a pair of clean knee pads and met the eyes of a tall, beautiful girl. She was offering him a letter. The envelope looked as if it were cut from a rose, Atsumu’s full name printed on it in typewriter-neat handwriting. 

“Watanabe-san?” he asked, perplexed.

“I know you prefer just ‘Atsumu,’” she started, “but I reasoned formalities were still a bit important.”

Atsumu’s ears pinked.

“It’s for you. Because I like you. And I know you’ll probably say no because of volleyball—and I get that, I do; I’m a swimmer—but I had to tell you.” For my own sake, her bowing lashes seemed to add.

Watanabe Mina had the height and conviction to hold Atsumu’s gaze as she confessed, but she was soft, too. Her heart was probably fragile. 

Miya Atsumu (not just Atsumu, because formalities were still a bit important) wasn’t sure what to say. While confessions were commonplace, Watanabe’s unflinching sincerity was otherworldly. So was her affliction. 

Miya Atsumu thought he wanted to say yes. 

But in the end, he called for a line and reached back to his well-worn script. “I appreciate it, but I can’t date with volleyball. I gotta go to practice now.” He swallowed, raising the knee pads in his hand as evidence.

Watanabe nodded, fingers curling around the letter. “I figured you’d say as much.”

“Yeah.”

Atsumu headed toward the door. He was ready to grind down the last five minutes like sesame seeds and wash them into the drain. But once he was out in the hall, something compelled him to look back. 

Watanabe Mina was still standing there. She wasn’t staring at him, though, nor was she mourning her spurned feelings. She was gazing out the closed window, where spidery tree branches were waving in a gentle breeze. And she looked like something out of a dream. 

The love letter rested on the table.

“Ya know, yer really pretty,” Atsumu started, voice faraway—if not a little flat. He couldn’t bring himself to use Watanabe’s name. “But more than that, yer a good person. You deserve someone like you.” 

He didn’t stay to hear her response. When Atsumu finally reached the Inarizaki gym, ten minutes late to practice, a drizzle had sprung outside. He wondered if Watanabe had left the classroom yet. Then he stopped wondering, and time kept going. 

There is a part of Atsumu that wants to forget Watanabe Mina. Unremember the winding afternoon and her tender hands; cleave the memory into unrecognizable fractions. But the universe does not let him. He thinks of her often, even a year and a half after the rejection. He will think of her many years in the future, he imagines, for she was the first person who liked him enough to hurt herself. 

March is over in the blink of an eye. In a heartbeat. Osamu leaves the family home as soon as possible, renting a one-room apartment the size of a modest closet and heading to the local culinary school. He gives up volleyball, which is to say that he gives up both Atsumu and a part of himself—if there is even a difference between the two. 

Osamu moves out and on. Atsumu has no choice but to move up, climbing the ladder of his preset passion. Scouted by universities since his second year, he has more than a few options for college teams. But Atsumu decided when he was fifteen that education beyond high school is for scrubs like his brother, so he signs a contract with the MSBY Black Jackals. He isn’t their first-string setter—won’t be for at least two years—but he’ll be part of a team with goals lined in gold. He can get behind this. He can get behind dedication.

“Make sure to call when you have trouble. And when you don’t.”

Atsumu’s mother says as she envelopes him in a bone-splitting hug. They are standing outside of his new living complex, the one that houses an old studio apartment that will now be home.

It is May in the city of Higashiosaka. Like a lilac paper cut, draping wisteria plants bring the blue sky into relief.

“I’ll call, Ma,” Atsumu wheezes, ribs floating. 

“And you better visit home,” she continues. 

“I swear I’ll visit home as much as I can.”

Neither of them speak. Then, his mother says, “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, I’m sure! Sheesh!” Atsumu snickers, unwedging himself from her iron grip. “Ya act like I break yer promises all the time or somethin’.” 

“I know you don’t, honey. I know you don’t."

Stars are twinkling down his mother’s cheeks. Her complexion is the shade of bleached coral, as though she has just seen a ghost. And maybe she has, in a way, because she has lost something permanently.

Atsumu knew this would happen—it did when Osamu left a month ago—but the sight of his mother’s wan smile still makes his knees lock. 

“I know you don’t break your promises,” his mother sniffles for the third time, wiping her face. The motion streaks lipstick across her left sleeve. “You and your brother both don’t.” She releases a titter. “How in the world did I end up with such good kids?”

Atsumu thinks he and his brother are, all in all, pretty shitty people. They grin more than they smile. They know they’re handsome, and they use this fact to sharpen their guile. They’re adults now, but they still settle their arguments with their fists. 

But for what it’s worth, his mother thinks they’re good. There is at least one person in this world who thinks that Atsumu is good . That he is something worth protecting, really and truly.

“I don’t know, Ma. I don’t know why Samu and I turned out the way we did.” 

Sadness plays across his mother’s swollen eyes. “Call,” she says, a question.

“Promise,” he says, an answer.

Eighteen years young, Miya Atsumu joins the V.League. 

The contract he hastily signed in February stipulated that he’d have a room in the team dorms for the duration of his playing. Atsumu’s apartment is more spacious than Osamu’s, but it isn’t magnificent by any means. 

1. There is a queen bed by the window.
2. A nightstand tucked in a lost corner.
3. A closet half the size of his wingspan.
4. A wooden desk that looks acutely startled, for lack of a better phrase—soft against a room that feels shelled. 

He has no personal bathroom because the entire floor shares communal restrooms. (This kind of makes Atsumu feel like he’s partaking in that college experience he missed out on, but perhaps that isn’t the end of the world. He texts his mother this thought, and she laughs in response.)

While his living situation is lackluster, his team is brilliant. They glitter against the practice gym, even when they play during the small hours of the morning or late evening. Atsumu’s high school teammates were “monsters,” as Kita-san fondly dubbed them, but they weren’t professionals. The Inarizaki High Boys Volleyball Team wasn’t obsessed with volleyball the way Atsumu and his new teammates are. 

The MSBY Black Jackals are well acquainted with giving up everything for a chance at something. At first, Atsumu feels like he’s in danger of being blown away just by standing on the same court as them, but then, one day, he remembers who he is. He is here for a reason. He is good in every sense of the word. So he starts to act like it. 

Eighteen months pass, and then Meian-san is remarking that if Atsumu keeps up the hard work, he’ll be part of next year’s starting lineup. Understandably, Atsumu is on cloud nine for the rest of the day. He eats half of Osaka’s food district, and he calls his brother and mother with childlike joy, and he retires home far too early for a boy who isn’t even a twenty-something yet.

And it is there, in his matchbox of an apartment, tucked beneath a spare fitted sheet because he spilled tea on his blanket, that Atsumu thinks: maybe, this is what he’s been missing. Maybe this will fulfill the want. Maybe this is what will stop him from being a thing that starves and eats itself, again and again. 

In the morning, Atsumu heads to the nearest salon, purchases all-new hair supplies, and changes his hair color in the empty communal restroom. 

Sakusa Kiyoomi is the first one to ask about this impromptu color switch. More than two years have elapsed since the night Atsumu nearly gave himself a chemical burn.

“Why did you bleach your hair blond?” 

Sakusa asks this over a three-minute water break. His neck twitches as he speaks—proof of the power he just put into scoring three points on Atsumu’s team during their practice match. 

“I’ve always bleached my hair,” Atsumu answers, because he’s a bit dense at times. “Since high school, at least.”

“I know. But it was darker in high school.”

“Well, everybody said my hair looked ugly back then,” Atsumu continues, “so I got impulsive one night and changed it.” He’s sheepish, though he’ll never admit it. 

The only indication his teammate has heard him is wiry humming. 

Sakusa Kiyoomi joined the MSBY Black Jackals a few months ago, finishing university with a degree in biomedical sciences and a collegiate volleyball MVP award. The grapevine of the V.League world describes him as reticent and stolid—qualities reflected in his playing. 

Contrary to popular belief, Atsumu and Sakusa get along just fine. They get along just fine because the only time they have to get along is on the court. Atsumu is used to playing with people who perceive him as little more than a nuisance outside of the athletic realm, and Sakusa seems to think slightly higher of him than that. 

He doesn’t mind when Sakusa passes him in the hallway without a hello. He doesn’t mind when Sakusa curls away from congratulatory high fives during matches. Atsumu doesn’t mind a lot of things when it comes to Sakusa. 

“That’s curious,” his teammate finally states, a break in his offbeat humming. “Very curious.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Atsumu shoots back, temper raging against the reins. He’s getting defensive, and it’s hard to determine whether this is because their conversation is concerning his appearance or his high school self. 

Sakusa disregards the biting tone. He sends Atsumu a caustic look that says: “You’re really asking me to spell my thoughts out?”

Atsumu raises an eyebrow in a challenge: “Humor me.”

“Your hair,” Sakusa starts, choosing his words like he’s tempering chocolate, “looked good back in high school.” 

Ah. So that’s what Sakusa meant.

News outlets and fans compliment Atsumu’s looks all the time, but Sakusa’s praise is different—inexplicably. 

There are a lot of inexplicable things about Sakusa Kiyoomi that Atsumu takes note of. He adores umeboshi but rarely buys them. He refuses to wear heathered clothing. He dons a white disposable mask as if it's his only defense against the cosmos, but he foregoes it when playing volleyball. Atsumu does not understand Sakusa, and Sakusa does not expect him to. 

And because of this, Sakusa’s compliment is not fair. It’s not fair that someone as blunt to a fault as him can be kind to Atsumu—the kind of kind that disarms. His compliment is superficial in every sense of the word, but it makes something come alive in Atsumu’s stomach. (Butterflies are too beautiful. Moths, perhaps.)

“Oh,” Atsumu says after far too long of a pause. “Thanks.” He thinks about adding, “I liked yer hair back in high school, too,”  but truthfully, he doesn’t remember a single thing related to high school Sakusa Kiyoomi beyond his freaky wrists and the horrid spin they could put on a ball. 

He gives the compliment anyway. To be polite and all that. “I liked yer old hair too, Omi-Omi.” 

Sakusa snorts. “No, you didn’t. I doubt you even remember my high school haircut.” A faint etching of something like a smile stretches across his chiseled face. It feels foreign and untouched. It’s nice. 

“I—” Atsumu frowns against his will. “I don’t remember shit,” he sighs. 

“Probably for the better,” Sakusa shrugs, raising interlocked hands above his head and stretching to one side. His form is as elegant as a synchronized swimmer’s. “It was a straightened mullet at one point.”

Atsumu imagines a brooding fifteen-year-old Sakusa Kiyoomi with emo hair. Then his teammate is louring, and soon, Atsumu is laughing—fuller and louder than he has in a long time.

“Ya know, yer a funny guy, Omi-kun.” Atsumu wipes the rivulet of sweat running down his temple. 

“Not particularly. I think we all have our fair share of regrets,” Sakusa says, not unkindly. “Or are you above that?”

And in the blink of an eye—in a heartbeat—Atsumu is seventeen again. He is looking at Watanabe Mina’s unhardened hands clutching the edges of her petal-pink envelope. He is sorry. 

A few paces behind them, Bokuto calls, “Hey, hey, hey! Are you two good?” His voice retains its trademark cheer, but it’s rugged with a hint of concern. 

Twenty-two-year-old Atsumu notices that there is something like tears brimming in his eyes. He blinks, and they fall.

“We’re okay,” Sakusa says without missing a beat. “Miya-kun’s just a bit sour because I’ve had more service aces than him today.” He steps closer to Atsumu, then, almost protectively. 

Bokuto sounds remarkably relieved at that. “Oh, all right! Don’t get too down on yourself, Tsum Tsum. Our team can still make a comeback and crush Omi-kun!” He goes back to chatting with Hinata and Inunaki-senpai after that. 

Sakusa brings his concentration back to Atsumu, staring at him like he’s lit on fire. (Absent-mindedly, Atsumu pats himself down.) 

“We’re okay,” Sakusa whispers. He passes Atsumu a towel from his practice bag. 

Once Atsumu’s eyes are dried and he’s about to pass back the towel, Sakusa says, “Keep it.” That almost smile is back on his teammate’s face. “You’ll need it, if your shoddy receiving during the second set was an indication of how hard you have to work against me.”

Atsumu clicks his tongue, cheeks ruddy. “Oh, fuck you!”

And then they go back to practicing.

He doesn’t recognize it, initially, that Sakusa had steered the conversation upon seeing his unease, that he’d given him a towel for his tears and coverage from prying eyes—the two things he needed most at the moment. When Atsumu does recognize this, weeks later, he still doesn’t think much of it.

1. September 5th: The wisteria plants outside of the apartment complex wither. 
2. September 20th: Sakusa says, “I keep seeing yellow butterflies lately. Everywhere.”
3. October 4th: Osamu stays with him for their 23rd birthday weekend. 
   1. Their father leaves a voicemail.
4. November 17th: The MSBY Black Jackals win their match against the Schweiden Adlers. 
   1. His mother texts. High on victory, he forgets to reply. 
5. November 18th: Sakusa wears pearl barrettes in his hair. 
6. December 4th: Miya Atsumu falls for Sakusa Kiyoomi on a dry December night. 
   1. It goes like this:

It’s dark all around Atsumu, and he can’t breathe. It’s really fucking dark, and he can’t fucking breathe. His ribs feel cracked. Something licks at the leaking marrow.

Drown out the thoughts, or they’ll drown you.

All at once, Atsumu startles awake, gasping to swallow life back into his lungs. His nose is digging into the mattress, the cartilage crooking like a bent paper clip. There is a puddle of red below his face that runs maroon in the moonlight. 

Nosebleed, he discerns, pushing his chest off the mattress to distance himself from the smell of copper. Needa buy a humidifier or somethin’. 

The clock on his bedside table reads 3:37 AM. The angry, glowing numbers pull Atsumu from his stupor. 

Communal restrooms: down the hall, on the left. Atsumu barges through the door and drapes himself over the closest sink. Breathing erratic, he glances up at his reflection in the mirror. His skin is pale and pitted like pounded mochi. Blood pools in his Cupid’s bow.

For some reason, Atsumu’s first instinct is to clean his mouth. He cups water in his hands and splashes it against his face, which only makes it worse because, of course, it would make it worse; it’s water, for fuck’s sake, what’s wrong with you?

Eventually, Atsumu gathers the clarity to stop wetting his face and start plugging up the flow. His left nostril has stopped bleeding, but the right is ardent on being the fucking Nunobiki Falls. He rumples a paper towel with clumsy fingers and shoves it up to his nose. And only then—with his nasal cavity clogged and the bottom half of his face dripping—does he finally catch a breath.

Breathe. Breathe.

Atsumu turns on the faucet and watches the water stream until the sink bowl is bone-white again. Then he wipes his mouth and lathers his hands. Clean, he opens the bathroom door. 

Sakusa Kiyoomi stands across from him, half a meter away, a gel ice pack in hand. “Hi,” he says.

Atsumu blinks. He slams the bathroom door shut, goes right back to draping himself over the sink, and spits a mouthful of blood into the patch of rust at its center. Of course, his most aberrant, judgemental teammate has to see him at his worst. Of course, it’s tonight when Sakusa is awake at a godforsaken time. Of course, he wants to help Atsumu. 

The blood clot washes down the drain far too swiftly. 

Atsumu slinks back to the door, opens it like there’s a monster on the other side rather than a twenty-two-year-old who wears toe socks and studded bobby pins. “Fine evenin’, ain’t it, Omi-kun?” 

“It’s four AM.” Sakusa’s voice is clear enough to cut diamonds. 

“Well, good mornin’ to you, then.” The cotton in Atsumu’s nose is beginning to swell scarlet. “What are ya doin’ out in the middle of the hall?”

Sakusa shrugs, elusive as ever. There is no pleated paper mask spanning his face, and dark circles drag down his eyes. “Heard a clatter and decided it was my moral obligation to make sure you weren’t dead.”

“Real flatterin’, thanks.” Atsumu scratches at the back of his neck. “I’m fine, though. Just a nosebleed.”

“I can infer.”

“Right.”

Unease break in waves. Somehow, the conversation feels intimate. 

“Sorry ya had to come outta yer room and find me like this,” Atsumu coughs, shoulders shaking. “It’s pretty gross, I know.”

“I don’t mind,” Sakusa says. 

“Really? Are ya sure about that?” There’s sincerity below Atsumu’s bafflement. If he’d spoken softer, maybe Sakusa would have heard it. 

“Really.”

“I mean, I’m still bleedin’ as we speak.”

“I’m sure I don’t mind, Atsumu.” The corner of Sakusa’s mouth quirks upward—that something reminiscent of a smile, again. “I have a BBP kit in my room,” he continues very seriously.

“Oh. That’s convenient, I guess,” Atsumu replies, because it seems like the right thing to say. 

He keeps getting distracted by his teammate’s face. It’s not a new sight, per se; Sakusa bares his face at every practice. But in the gym, it’s tense. Tonight, his muscles are relaxed. His shoulders are down. His lips don’t purse. Overall, he appears untroubled. 

Miya Atsumu’s nose is draining itself dry, and it’s late enough to mock dawn, and Sakusa Kiyoomi appears untroubled. 

“Are you going to take the ice pack?” Sakusa asks. “It’s for you: to constrict the blood vessels in your nose.” 

“I know why ice packs help bloody noses,” Atsumu responds, because he’s stupid. “Thanks, though. I appreciate it.”

Sakusa nods, handing him the ice pack. “You say it’s a setter’s job to take care of his spikers. I think it goes both ways.” He tucks a stray curl behind his ear. 

“Are ya only helpin’ me cause yer nervous I’ll drag down the team with the effects of an un-iced nosebleed?” Atsumu tries not to think about the fact that his nose fucking burns. 

“Of course. Why else would I help you?”

Why else would he help you? “No reason.”

Sakusa raises a brow, then rolls his eyes without throwing back his head. “I won’t take it personally, but that stings, Miya-kun. Some of us actually care about you, and as more than just an athlete or a pawn of our team.”

Oh.

“You don’t hear that enough, do you?” Sakusa says, followed by, “Don’t respond to that question—it’s rhetorical.”

Atsumu wants to respond, but he doesn’t. And it’s not because Sakusa told him not to, but because he’s pretty sure that if he were to open his mouth, something embarrassing might slip out, like “No, I don’t hear that enough,” or “Shut the fuck up,” or “Please don't say that ya care about me, cause I might fall in love with ya.”

“It’s late. We have morning practice.” Sakusa sighs. “You should try to get some sleep.”

Atsumu’s breath latches in his throat. “Yeah.”

“Goodnight, Miya-kun.” Sakusa slithers back into his room. “Take care of yourself, please.”

“You too.”

Sakusa’s words echo in Atsumu’s mind long after the bleeding has stopped. 

Though all members technically own a room in the dorms, most of the MSBY Black Jackals stay elsewhere. Only god knows how, but Meian-san owns a house. Inunaki-senpai and Tomas started renting a snazzy condominium together two years ago. (Atsumu chooses not to think about their relationship.) Bokuto rooms with his high school sweetheart, and lately, Shouyou has been staying with Kageyama from the Adlers. 

Because of these arrangements, the dorms tend to remain empty, save for Atsumu and a few others.

It’s not quite what he expected—this quiet that shrouds his floor. But Atsumu learned over the years that being lonely, being alone, and being by himself are all different phenomena. He really only experiences the last two, and he doesn’t find them so bad. 

One of the features of each floor is a communal kitchen and living room. They are at the very end of every hall, inviting despite their underwhelming furnishing. 

Atsumu finds refuge in the dining kitchen at his lowest of points. An example of this was last night, when he craved something rotten for his body after tirelessly touching up his hair. At half past midnight, he boiled convenience store ramen and scarfed it down straight from the pan while it was still scalding. 

The following morning, Atsumu fondly regards the saucepan, spoon, and chopsticks that now huddle together in the drying rack.

“Good mornin’,” he says to the dishes, as though they can hear him. He closes his eyes and unleashes a rumbling yawn beside the counter. 

“Good morning,” a voice returns.

Atsumu jolts his eyes open, losing his balance just enough to smack the back of his head on one of the overhanging cabinets. He rubs at the bump that is forming and sends Sakusa Kiyoomi his best glare. 

His teammate, in turn, smiles. “Looks like you might need to work on your coordination.” There is a box of apples in front of Sakusa, alongside a cutting board and knife. He is turning one of the fruits over in his hand, eyeing the sink that Atsumu stands in front of. 

Ah. Atsumu scooches to the side to allow Sakusa in and says, without bite, “Nah, I think ya just gotta work on not scarin’ the shit outta me.”

It’s been two months since Miya Atsumu accepted his feelings for Sakusa Kiyoomi, and because the universe is a funny, funny thing, they get along better than ever. Sakusa no longer religiously wears his mask around Atsumu. Their banter does not border on cruelty. They are, arguably, friends. 

It’s been two months since Miya Atsumu accepted his feelings for Sakusa Kiyoomi, and he has smoothed out in the areas where he should be strong. He is brittle in the places where he should be soft. 

Sakusa has made his way over to the counter. As he creaks the aging faucet on and lets the water pour over his apple, he says to Atsumu, “You touched up your hair again, didn’t you?” 

“And what if I did?” Atsumu retorts, narrowing his eyes in a parody of Sakusa’s skepticism. 

His teammate shrugs, drying off his apple and using the paper towel to turn off the sink. “I’d tell you the color looked nice.” 

“Oh. Uh, thanks.” Atsumu scorns the way his voice cracks like black sugar. It’s stupid. He’s not sixteen anymore, bracing himself and bumbling through all of his firsts. He feels like a kid—getting excited about boys who don’t matter. 

“You’re welcome.” Sakusa is back at the island now, apple resting on the cutting board. He picks up the knife. 

“I was kinda nervous about how it looked, if I’m bein’ honest.” Atsumu’s not sure why he says this. He probably could have gone his entire life without letting Sakusa know about such shallow insecurity.

“Well, honesty is a good look on you,” Sakusa responds, severing the apple into quarters. “And so is that color. If I were you, I wouldn’t worry about your hair anymore.”

The kitchen is made strange by the sunlight pouring in through the windows. Atsumu’s world is tinted teal by the glass. Sakusa is smiling, just barely. It smells like clean cardboard. 

“Okay.”

Optional practices are by far the worst scam out there. While the MSBY Black Jackals’ official season starts in August, optional practices worm into the calendar as early as May. And here’s the thing about optional practices: they aren’t optional. Not by a long shot. It is unspoken but well understood that a player should attend all practices they physically can. All first-string players, in particular, must be present at these mandatory, optional practices. So, unless Atsumu is hospitalized or honeymooning, he’s dragging his heels to the gym for every oxymoron. 

To put it plainly: screw optional practices. 

“Shouyou!”

Atsumu shifts his weight toward the balls of his feet. He raises his arms above his head and delivers a pinpointed set into his teammate’s waiting palm. Inunaki-senpai receives the ball, but the other side of the court falls into disarray, and the point ends up going to Atsumu’s team. 

Pleased, Coach Foster calls the match to a halt. 

Shouyou scurries over to Atsumu, and he looks like sunshine incarnate when he says, “That set felt great, Atsumu-san! Like”—and here, he gesticulates just wide enough to smack Bokuto in the chest—“Bwah!”

It is June. Atsumu wants to keep getting better. 

“My pleasure, my pleasure,” he grins, bowing. “Yer my go-to guy today, Shou!”

Atsumu’s statement is true, but it’s also rare. During practice matches among the team, he often ends up paired with Shouyou. But the two are also typically with Sakusa, meaning Atsumu will evenly divide up the number of tosses he sends to them. He foregoes this practice only if one of his hitters has an off day.  

Sakusa Kiyoomi is having an off day. He is having a day so far off from his predisposed near-perfection that it is puzzling. His serves are that of a high schooler. His spikes are crooked. 

It worries Atsumu endlessly. He wonders whether it is reasonable to fret about another person’s well-being as much as his own. 

The beauty of the Jackals’ practice facility is how bright it is. Large glass panels decorate the walls, and skylights speckle the ceiling like fading stars. (Barnes, of all people, had pointed this out during a seven AM optional practice from hell. He had nodded his head toward the rays of sun pouring through and said, “I love having this much light. It makes me so happy.”)

Sakusa has spent the last minute and a half staring up at the blazing ceiling. His chin is dipped back as if it is too much work to keep his neck straight. 

Coach Foster’s voice grates on Atsumu’s ears. “Break’s over! Let’s finish this match off strong.”

The MSBY Black Jackals relace their shoes, straighten their knee pads, and bound back onto the court. Atsumu scores another service ace. Tomas tapes his fingers after a nasty block. Sakusa’s playing remains peculiar and poor for the next two hours and twenty-two minutes, and then practice is over. 

Atsumu heard, once, that Sakusa is fond of rules. As a rule, Sakusa uses an even number of bobby pins, and he’s anxious if he loses one and then has an odd number of clips. Sakusa upholds a rule by lint rolling his attire before he starts practicing. And it is a rule, the way he counts up to thirty seconds but never down while washing his hands. 

Sakusa Kiyoomi likes rules, so even after his worst practice of the year, he immediately slips into the showers and hits the streets of Osaka first out of the team. 

Atsumu rinses off hastily to catch up with his teammate. He distinguishes Sakusa’s trademark gait—far too delicate for someone of his size and horrific posture—a block away. He calls out to him: “Omi-kun!”

A few people turn their heads. Sakusa bristles but keeps walking.

As a rule, Atsumu is not an exception. He picks up his pace. 

Sakusa navigates empty streets and alleys, heading in the opposite direction of the dorms. He knows Atsumu is tailing him, but he does not comment on it passively or turn around to stare him down. He just keeps trudging on, as if it is all he knows how to do. So, after fifteen minutes of the most pathetic game of cat and mouse in history, Atsumu decides to fuck it and close the distance between them.

He jogs up to his teammate, as near as he can get, and then, he says Sakusa’s name again. His real name. Softer, this time—as if he could hold it in uncurled hands. 

“Kiyoomi-kun.”

At this, Sakusa finally turns around. Below his mask, a question seems to hang on his downturned lips.

Atsumu wants to tell Sakusa to brush off the mistakes he made at practice—feels the urge to point out that everyone has their bad days—but he cannot override the obvious. Sakusa’s playing was shitty because something outside of the sport that overtakes his life is wrong. So Atsumu says what he can. 

“Kiyoomi-kun, are ya okay?”

The words suspend between them. It must be the humidity. 

And Sakusa looks like a child with a scraped knee, a bruised cheek. He schools his eyes back into that mortifying vacancy and says, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Atsumu pushes, because he can. Because the unlikely, worst-case scenario is that Sakusa snaps at him, and maybe he’s been hoping for some far-fetched things lately.

“Nah, ya look more depressed than when we lose a match.” More depressed than I’ve ever seen ya. “Somethin's up.”

“With all due respect,” Sakusa begins, as if he’s deigning to speak to Atsumu, “I don’t owe you an explanation, Miya-kun.”

“No, ya don’t, but honesty would be appreciated.” Atsumu smiles, small. “It’s a good look on ya.”

For what it’s worth, Sakusa does not shut him down. “I’d rather not talk about it, but something is going on with my family.” He fiddles with the hem of his jacket like he’s apprehensive about offering the wrong words. “It’s my parents, if you must know. They’re—”

Here, Atsumu cuts him off with a hand. “I don’t needa hear the details. I just wanted to makes sure yer okay.” 

Sakusa releases his hold of his jacket seam. “I am. Or, I will be.”

It feels like a daydream—having Sakusa be this open with him. More than joyous, it’s strange. But maybe Atsumu finds solace in this strangeness—in the dream-like quality of noon—enough to hurt himself. Because he finds himself saying to Sakusa, “Hey. Why don’t we get ya some bubble tea?”

The dream persists. 

“I know ya have a sweet tooth,” Atsumu continues, “and there’s a pretty good boba shop near here, now that we’ve walked half the city.”

It’s stupid. It’s stupid that he's trying to remedy Sakusa’s problems with overpriced tapioca pearls, stupid when they’re professional athletes who are supposed to abstain from sugar, stupid when he knows Sakusa will only decline.

Time calcifies before it melts again. Sweat beads at Atsumu’s temple. And then, Sakusa grimaces and rocks his world. 

“Fine.”

You can tell a lot about a person based on their bubble tea order. Sakusa’s drink of choice is coffee milk tea with tapioca pearls, 100% ice, and 100% sweetness. It is a monstrously simple order, and Sakusa recites it to the cashier with confidence.

Today, Atsumu drinks a light-iced matcha milk tea with tapioca pearls and azuki. Heeding the menu’s warning about their green tea’s bitterness, he went with 100% sweetness. Unlike Sakusa, who always sticks with a tried and true order, Atsumu prefers to try new things whenever he orders food or drink. This method allows him to identify if he’d be willing to have the selection again. 

Atsumu does not possess the will to order a light-iced matcha milk tea with tapioca pearls and azuki again. 

He and Sakusa walk side by side, their drinks in hand. They don’t make small talk, so Atsumu listens to the sounds of the city around him. Bicycle bells ring as they rush down the sidewalks. Cicadas whistle high in the trees. There is a pitter-patter of rain starting to fall.

Rain. Sakusa stops walking, just before a crevice in the sidewalk, and looks up. “It’s going to rain,” he says, as if the thought has never crossed his mind before. “And heavily. We’re too far to make it back to the dorms before the downpour starts.” 

Because Atsumu is chronically unlucky, he declares, “Well, I forgot my umbrella.” 

Sakusa nods. “Me too. I’m sure we can find coverage somewhere around here.”

They end up below the eave of a crepe shop that is closed on the weekends. At 12:31 PM on a graying Saturday, hustle and bustle does not encase it. The sky shows no intention of clearing up soon, so Atsumu stops scrutinizing it and instead looks at Sakusa. His throat constricts when he realizes Sakusa is looking at his hand. 

“You don’t like matcha bubble tea,” Sakusa observes.

Atsumu’s cup is more than half full. “I don’t like this matcha bubble tea,” he corrects. “I like it in general, but this one’s too sweet. Makes my stomach feel funny.” He cocks his head toward his teammate’s drink. “Ya sure do love yer bubble tea order, though, huh?”

The rain falls and falls, and Atsumu is afraid he’s messed up. 

But then Sakusa is pulling his iced coffee away from his chest, stirring the straw. “No, I don’t really,” he says. 

“But you’ve already drunk, like, half of that thing!”

“Maybe I’m just fast," Sakusa counters. “Don't get me wrong; I enjoy coffee-flavored bubble tea. But the novelty of it all kind of wears off.” He’s far away when he says this—moons, oceans, kilometers.

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

That quote, in Atsumu’s mind, is pure bullshit. People can and should wait for the storm to pass. There is no good reason to ruin a trusty pair of shoes or a freshly-ironed shirt every time Mother Nature works her wonders. It’s childish at best and absurd at worst. 

Atsumu does not believe in dancing in the rain, but right now, standing beside Sakusa Kiyoomi, he thinks he understands why some people do. 

“Omi-kun,” he says, turning to his teammate. (Sakusa gives him an unimpressed, sidelong glance.) “Let’s walk back now.”

It would have been easier if Sakusa had agreed. Atsumu could have walked home, and placed the waterlogged day’s events in rice, and then wrapped the dried memory in tissue paper for safekeeping. But nothing with Sakusa is ever easy, so Atsumu receives a head of shaking curls.

“No, we’re waiting here until the storm passes,” Sakusa announces. “You can’t beat tsuyu.”

Atsumu’s heartbeat is loud in his ears. “Oh. Okay.” And for a single, stupid moment, he thinks to himself: Please. Please, please let me remember this. 

The storm does not pass for twenty minutes, but it feels like mere seconds. How strange it is to stand beside someone you love, watching rain fall from the sky. How strange it is to find the ordinary so riveting. 

At one point, Sakusa says, “Thank you, Miya-kun.” It’s a near-shout to breach the roaring water, but it registers as a whisper. “For taking me here. For helping me forget.”

Atsumu thinks: Forget what? Yer god awful performance at practice today? The family issue you’ve been skirtin’ around? The fact that I accidentally drank from yer water bottle a year ago? 

“I gotcha stuck in the middle of the city durin’ the cousin of a monsoon.”

“I know.” Sakusa’s eyes, crinkling, meet Atsumu’s. “I don’t mind.” Then he is gazing forward again, leaving Atsumu to look at his aggressively beautiful side profile.

Sakusa Kiyoomi is a lot like water. There is no telling whether he’ll be a drizzle, or a hurricane, or the dew on curling leaves in the morning. He is reliable and relenting in all the wrong, right ways. That’s Sakusa Kiyoomi.

Atsumu inhales the scent of petrichor and tries to steady his breathing. He does not know what love is, but he thinks that somewhere, distantly—far behind his lungs and the lines of shitty poetry—he loves Sakusa Kiyoomi. And one day, he’ll tell him.

It's nothing eventful. Atsumu supposes he shouldn’t have expected it to be. 

The set is as follows: Nine AM on the first Friday of October. Atsumu and Sakusa sit one stool apart at the kitchen island, respective drinks in front of them. (Chamomile tea with no sweetener for Atsumu, iced coffee with gum syrup for Sakusa.) There is a window open. 

Atsumu has vowed to confess before he finishes his drink, but nerves beleaguer him into it before he’s taken three sips. “I like ya,” he blurts to Sakusa, mug shaking in his hands. “A lot. I like seein’ yer smile, and I like it when ya tease me, and I like walkin’ home from practice with ya, even though it’s rare.”

He’s not sure when he squeezed his eyes shut, but he cracks one open after an oppressive fifteen seconds of silence pass.

Sakusa appears lost in the puddling morning, shoulders loose and expression blank. His knee is jiggling up and down in a way that Atsumu’s mother would condemn. All in all, he looks thoroughly checked out—until he whips his body around to face Atsumu, lifts his coffee to his mouth, and blows a single word across the ice cubes: “No.”

Silence steams the kitchen. 

“What do ya mean no ?” Atsumu scooches his stool toward Sakusa, hissing as the gangly legs scrape the wooden floor.

“No,” Sakusa repeats, “you don’t like me.”

“What? How, how can ya say that?” With every sputter, Atsumu’s mental age regresses by a year, and he tramples a little harder on the friendship he has precariously built. “I most certainly do like ya! I like ya so much that it hurts my fuckin’ chest, you motherfucker!” 

“Well, you sure know how to flatter someone,” Sakusa murmurs.

Atsumu clutches both hands around his mug for fear they will lash out if not grounded by something. “I don’t understand, Omi-kun.”

“You don’t like me,” his teammate reiterates. “We’re just alike.”

“Are ya twistin’ my words?”

“I’m not twisting anything,” Sakusa says, in between sips of iced coffee. “We’re similar. That’s what you like about me.”

The breeze from the window wafts through the kitchen. It circles the ceiling, sends a chill down Atsumu’s spine. “I’m… I’m not followin’?” 

“You and I are similar, Miya-kun.” Sakusa utters his name soft enough to dent the kitchen counter. His voice isn’t exceptionally quiet or loud—just soft. “We’ve both sacrificed everything for volleyball. We both have struggled to let people in.”

Atsumu’s heart is shouting. He cannot make out his reflection in his tea. “But I like ya, Omi-Omi.”

Sakusa stirs his iced coffee back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. “I like you, too, Miya-kun. I appreciate our friendship, and it’s enough for me. It always will be.”

At 9:11 AM on the first Friday of October, Miya Atsumu is firmly rejected by Sakusa Kiyoomi—a boy he has played against for years but only recently come to know. 

Sakusa doesn’t apologize for his actions, because he doesn’t have to. You can feel sad about something without feeling sorry. Some things can be fair and still be undeserved. 

To: Miya Osamu
[3:08 AM]
can we talk?

[3:12 AM]
please

[3:12 AM]
nevermind

From: Miya Osamu
[3:14 AM]
why the fuck are you awake at three am

A bubblegum pop ringtone breaks the white noise from the dying fan. Atsumu swats for his phone and answers without looking at the caller ID.

“Ya know, Tsumu, ya gotta lotta nerve for callin’ a guy at three AM on a Thursday when ya know he gets up at six AM to open shop.” 

Sometimes, Miya Osamu’s sleep schedule is fucked up by binging Korean dramas, or gaming with Suna at ungodly hours, or some other spookily mundane activity. But other times, he pretends to be a Real Adult—the kind who hangs their futon every day and buys organic produce and uses bamboo coasters. And the kind who goes to bed before three AM.

“Sorry,” Atsumu mutters, and he means it.

Osamu snorts. “Woah, there. Why is Miya Atsumu, known for havin’ his head up his ass, apologizin’ to someone? And why is he mumblin’ as he does it?”

Though his brother’s cackling is obnoxious, Atsumu doesn’t have the heart to bully him for it. “I don’t know, Samu. I don’t know anythin.’”

Static occupies the space between them, and then Osamu is trying to unwrap the bleeding tension that stains the telephone line. 

“Hey, are ya okay?”

Atsumu’s mouth has silted up, and erosion is a slow process. 

Osamu repeats his question. “Ya good, Tsumu?”

Back when they were younger—before they knew what debt was or had people to sing love songs about—Osamu would lie beside Atsumu until the words came out. He wouldn’t pat his brother’s back or squeeze his hand, but he would wait there, and that was enough. 

Atsumu wonders when things stopped being enough.

“Did somethin’ happen with Sakusa-kun?” Osamu asks, knifing the stacking silence. 

As a response, Atsumu groans into his pillow. 

Miya Osamu is a bastard. People deem him the better of the brothers, but the truth is, he’s just as rotten as Atsumu. They overlap in far too many places. Like Atsumu, he is a bastard. Like Atsumu, he is perceptive. And like Atsumu, he cares. 

“So,” Osamu starts, and Atsumu can picture him setting down his phone beside his cheek, settling his arms behind his head, “How long ago did ya tell him?”

“A week or so.” Six days, to be exact. “I really fuckin’ hate myself.”

“I’m guessin’ it didn’t go over well, then, huh?” 

It did go over well, Atsumu thinks, still facedown. That’s the problem. “Why’d I have to tell him?” he rasps, groaning muffled by the pillow. “Why couldn’t I have just kept my damn mouth shut and lived with it?”

“Cause that’s stupid,” Osamu counters, mordant.

“Yeah, well, I’m stupid.”

“Well, that’s for sure.” A pause. “But ya know, Tsumu,  it’s not yer fault. And it ain’t his either.”

Of course, Atsumu knows this. He’s not twelve. He is aware that love is a fickle thing, aware that Sakusa’s feelings aren’t. He knows this, and knows this, and knows this, and still, it aches.

“Sometimes,” his brother continues, “the feelings just ain’t there. And ya can’t do shit about that.”

“It ain’t fair.” The pillow tastes stale.

“No one promised it would be.”

Because Osamu always wins, he is right. Atsumu can’t be upset with Sakusa—not really, anyway. It would be different if Sakusa had been mean about the confession, if he’d laughed and pointed a petulant finger at Atsumu. But he hadn’t been. He was honest, treating the admission like an incident report. His gaunt words were kindness in its purest form. 

“You’ll be okay.” Osamu exhales, and it’s horrible to hear his breath droop with pity. “You’ve made it through shit thousands of times harder than this.” 

Atsumu has lost at nationals. He has lived alone and learned to play volleyball without his lifelong partner. His parents split without ever explaining why. And despite all of this, the devastation from his rejection is different, because he told himself he was ready. Atsumu told himself he wouldn’t be upset if Sakusa said no to him, since half of the words the guy utters in a given day are “no.”

But then Sakusa Kiyoomi rejected his ugly feelings—the moths in his stomach and the guilt on his hands—and somehow, it was different. It was humiliating.

The Miya twins have fallen into a parody of quiet over the past few minutes. Atsumu knows his brother is tired, and he also knows it will be a sleepless night for both of them.

“Most people probably get rejected by someone at some point or another in their life,” he wheezes, limbs heavy and heart tumid. “I guess Sakusa Kiyoomi was just that person for me.” 

Atsumu’s hand is hovering over the End Call button when his brother responds. 

“People aren’t supposed to be parameters, Tsumu. You’ll be okay.”

Osamu hangs up first. 

Against all odds, nothing really changes between him and Sakusa after the confession. Sakusa still offers him wry smiles during practices and matches. He still sips his iced coffee beside Atsumu in the mornings and compliments his hair when he pleases. The near-comity between them re-scaffolds itself. 

But maybe Atsumu was the foolish one to expect that things would even change after he confessed. Maybe he did the thing again, the stupid thing, where he placed too much importance on himself, assumed he added to the gravity of a situation when he really was just dark matter—invisible, disregardable.

Three months and thirteen matches pass, and Atsumu’s feelings do not cease. They quiet down, sure, do less pounding at his skull and more lullabying behind his head, but they are there. He begins to question if they always will be. 

The only measurable difference that comes out of his soft heartbreak is the increase in conversations with Osamu. They call every Tuesday night and text more than they did in high school. His brother tells him to focus on the good things in his life: he gets to do what he loves as a career. He has teammates who care about him. The trees dotting Higashiosaka are crystallizing to the color of clementines.

Atsumu practices gratitude as instructed, and he probably becomes a better person because of it. But his hurt continues to feel bottomless. Osamu calls him ignorant for thinking it wouldn’t.

October, November, December. Rinse, dry, repeat. 

He has practice tomorrow. One thing at a time. 

V.League players get few breaks throughout the year, especially considering the lie in plain sight that is optional spring practices. The twenty-four hours off coinciding with national holidays are more like breathers, so aside from Golden Week, the MSBY Black Jackals have only one real break: winter break. Toward late December and frosting over into January, Miya Atsumu can run leash-free. 

If you take the leash off an animal that has existed in one cage for the last six years, who is to say they will leave it? Who is to say their desire for freedom is still there? Shouyou and Kageyama invite Atsumu to visit Miyagi, and Bokuto says he has a guest room in his condo in Tokyo, but he declines both of his friends’ kind offers. He thinks about if he would have said yes, back when he was just a bit younger. 

Maybe his friends’ invitations are why he buys a train ticket to Amagasaki two days before break. Or maybe it’s because he misses his mother’s slightly charred yakisoba. Or maybe it’s because the trip really is only an hour and change, and Atsumu has neglected the place he grew up for far too long while trying to chase passion. His dreams used to feel so much bigger and better than his fractured family and old city. 

Atsumu packs the same morning that he leaves, and he marvels at how full his apartment remains even after two weeks’ worth of belongings are crammed into his suitcase. It feels like an assertion that, yes, someone exists here. Someone sleeps and sings and worries and breathes here. Someone has managed to graft a life for themself, here, within these four white walls. 

The ride from Higashiosaka to Amagasaki is shorter than he remembers. Atsumu arrives before he can indulge in the blurring nature beyond the train windows, and he ascends the stairs of his former station slowly. It is difficult to resist the urge to shy away from the snow-white scenery that greets him. 

It has been six years since Atsumu was last in Amagasaki. Six years since he heaved his mammoth of a suitcase onto the train, six years since he left without bidding farewell or thank you. He probably should have thanked his mother. 

Only then does it occur to him that he didn’t let his mother know in advance about his visit. Miya Emiko could be up north for winter or having other guests over, or any number of scenarios that would clash with Atsumu’s unplanned stay. There is no guarantee that she even has space for him in the house, because that house is no longer his. And standing outside the train station he once passed through five days a week, if not more, Atsumu faces the slow, exhaustive realization that, maybe, Amagasaki is no longer his home.

He calls his mother. The line rings twice before she picks up.

“Moshi moshi!”

“Moshi moshi, Ma.”

His mother’s astonishment is evident. “Atsumu, honey, why are you calling me?”

“Do I need a reason to?” he asks, and he starts scrolling through his call records absentmindedly. Atsumu notices, then, that he hasn’t called his mother in the last two months. He doesn’t remember when he stopped. 

“No, you know you never do, but I figure there is one.” He can hear his mother grin. “Am I right?”

Atsumu turns his phone away from his cheek so he can chuckle. “Yer always right,” he replies, catching his breath. “I’m comin’ home, Ma. For winter break.”

The din of clapping fills his phone. “Oh, what a surprise!” his mother exclaims. “Is your brother visiting too?”

Atsumu didn’t think to ask Osamu about his plans for the end of the year. “Nah, I don’t think so. He’s probably got real fancy business stuff to deal with.” (It’s an impressive feat—how Atsumu leaves the condescension out of his voice.)

“Oh, yes, I know how he is,” his mother filters through a laugh. “But I’m still excited to see one of my boys! When do you arrive?”

Ah. Atsumu shuffles his feet against the sleet-covered ground. “Uh, now?”

There is no response.

“I, uh, kinda impulsively bought a ticket a couple of days ago and forgot to tell ya.” The line maintains its quiet, so Atsumu whispers, “I don’t have anywhere else to go, Ma.” 

His mother reads between the lines. She always does. 

“What’s that tone for, Atsumu? Get your ass home so I can scold you for your poor scheduling and manners!”

From viewing outside, Atsumu’s childhood home appears to have withstood time. The muted brown paint of it has not chipped. Wayward vines remain wound around the property; the Miya family nameplate is still bolted to the front gate. 

Atsumu is wary of entering the property. The months and years of distance have made him a trespassing anachronism. When he does finally unlock the thigh-level gate, he can’t shake the feeling that he’s stomping on his childhood, on star-washed nights and dew-lit mornings reserved for twelve-year-old eyes. 

His mother is the one who opens the front door. It shouldn’t be a surprise when she’s the only one who’s lived in the house for the past decade, and yet it is. Miya Emiko has aged like fine wine, but she has aged nonetheless. Her short hair barely brushes her chin. 

Atsumu casts his suitcase aside to hug her.  

“It’s good to have you home, honey,” his mother says, squishing his sides. She slips out of his tight grasp to pull Atsumu down by the ear and ruffle his hair. “You really should visit more!”

“I know, Ma. I promise I will.”

The hand in Atsumu’s dying hair stutters but does not still. He leans a bit further into his mother’s touch and pretends that promises aren’t made to be broken. 

After far too long of an embrace, the two of them snake inside. Atsumu slides his sneakers into the bottom shelf of the shoe box and parks his suitcase in his empty childhood bedroom.  

His mother waits for him in the kitchen. “Are you hungry?” she asks, a wooden cutting board already set out. “I was thinking about making napolitan.”

Atsumu takes a seat at the kitchen table. “That sounds great.”

Behind the high counter and against the cream cabinets, his mother looks like part of a tableau. She has clipped her thinning black bangs to the side and looped a worn apron speckled with planes around her neck. Atsumu had asked about the origin of the kitschy garment, once, back when he was in high school. 

“This old thing? It was a gift from Japan Airlines,” his mother had informed him, untying the ribbon around her waist so she could pull the fabric of the apron forward. 

Atsumu tilted his head to examine it. Sure enough, accompanying the plane motif was the name of the airline in fine print. “Why would you have a gift from Japan Airlines?” he asked, and there was more venom in his voice than he had intended.

His mother has always been kinder than him—understanding in all the old ways—so she only laughed at the question. Then she retied her apron. “I used to travel a lot before you and your brother were born. Dozens and dozens of places.”

He recalls this moment in time as his mother starts to prepare the meal. 

The intrigue of napolitan is rooted in its coloring. With ketchup as the primary sauce ingredient, the pasta is the color of rust. Atsumu’s mother likes to add assorted bell peppers when she cooks napolitan because she says it makes the dish “easier on the eyes.”

Green, red, yellow. Yellow, red, green. Green, yellow, yellow. His mother washes each bell pepper, slices it vertically, and then plucks out the seeds. A pot of water boils on the stove; a package of spaghetti waits beside it.

Atsumu alternates between watching his mother’s nimble hands and studying the baby photos of him lining the counter.

Fifteen minutes later, Miya Emiko places a plate of napolitan down in front of her son. She does not have food of her own.

Atsumu frowns, picking up his fork. "Didn’t ya make any for yerself?” 

“I ate before you came,” his mother responds, smiling. “Now, let me know how it tastes!”

From there, Atsumu eats without bothering to mask the sounds of his chewing. His mother pours herself mugicha and occasionally sways her cup so that the ice cubes knock against the glass like silver spoons. The silence is loud. The Miya family has always been about loud silence. 

A second, an hour, a year passes.

“Is everything all right?”

Up until this point, the atmosphere of the dining room has been floaty and bewitching. The innocuous question breaks the spell. 

Atsumu takes a bite of napolitan and thinks, idly, that it must be hereditary: the ability to read him. Osamu had to have gotten it from somewhere, after all. 

“I think I got my heart broken,” he says. The confession feels like jettisoning dead weight. 

His mother sips her mugicha. She rattles the ice in it. Then she says, “I’m sorry, honey,” and Atsumu knows she means it. “That’s not easy to go through.”

Atsumu stares down at the half-eaten plate of napolitan in front of him. “Did ya go through it yerself?”

“Course I did! You know, I’m older than I look.” His mother grins in that sad, knowing way of hers. “And besides, I didn’t split from your father because I stopped loving him.”

Three years ago, Osamu saw their father working in an auto repair shop in Sendai. He greeted Miya Hideki like an old friend, and a week after, the two agreed to have lunch together. Over onigiri sculpted by Osamu’s calloused hands, they engaged in a conversation more fit for former classmates than a father and son, talking for hours but never really saying anything. They never met up again. 

Atsumu knows Sendai is big. He knows that the probability of Osamu unintentionally meeting their father again is one in a million. But he still wonders how it would feel to live where his brother does. Would it sting to know he existed so close to his flesh and blood? If Atsumu worked in Sendai instead, and the stars willed him to pass his father by, what would he say? Would he call Osamu? His mother? Or would he keep the moment for himself, tuck it away in his wallet or behind his heart for safekeeping?

It was odd, at first, for Atsumu to confront all of these questions. It was odd to accept that perhaps he was envious of his brother’s proximity to their forgotten father.

He wonders if his mother would be jealous of Osamu, too, if she knew. 

The napolitan remaining on Atsumu’s plate is diminishing at an alarming rate. He twirls his fork around the insubstantial amount of spaghetti. “Ma?”

“Yes, honey?”

Chewing on his cheek, Atsumu asks, “Does it get easier?” 

“Well, if that isn’t the question of the century!” His mother places her glass down, focuses on something behind his head. “It takes time—lots of it. But yes, it does.”

Atsumu cranes his neck to follow her line of sight. There is only a family portrait on the wall behind him. When he was growing up, it hung in the living room.

In the picture, his mother wears a lavender kimono that looks sewn from a sunset. A golden obi frames her petite waist. His father is in the plainest of plain navy blue suits. He and Osamu sport black button-ups, plaid shorts, and grins too wide for a formal photograph. 

“I wish feelin’ better didn’t take so long,” Atsumu laments, looking back down at his plate.

“We all do.” His mother cracks her knuckles against the side of her glass. Her hands have gotten paler over the years. “But the strange part is that you don’t notice yourself starting to feel better. From my experience, you don’t know that you’re content again until you just ... are.”

Atsumu imagines his mother waking up one morning, digging through the storage boxes, and unearthing the family portrait. He imagines her hanging it up on the wall, realizing that it no longer brought her pain. 

While this vision is nice to mull over, his own happiness still feels distant.  

“It won’t, eventually,” his mother says, reaching over the table to place her hand on his trembling wrist. She winks. “And here I thought you’d finally grown out of the habit of saying your thoughts aloud.”

The tips of Atsumu’s ears burn as he sets down his fork. “Haven’t grown outta a lotta stuff, Ma.”

His mother remains seated across from him for the rest of dinner, even after her glass of mugicha runs dry. Her presence is soothing. She continues to sneak glances at the wall behind Atsumu, and Atsumu doesn’t mind. 

Outside, snow begins to fall.

Atsumu spends the night sleeping in his childhood bedroom. It is half empty without Osamu, but he takes up all of the space now. (The wood-floored room barely fit the both of them when they were gangly high schoolers.) In the morning, his mother asks him what his plans for his stay are. When he admits he doesn’t have any, she begins creating a loose itinerary. Atsumu thinks about blocking out a day or two to see old friends, but he has no clue who even hangs around town anymore. Most everyone has grown up and moved out, and it wouldn’t be wise to assume they’d come home for winter break—not when he, himself, didn’t for so many years.

Over the first week of winter break, Atsumu and his mother embark on several touristy adventures. It’s unexpectedly cathartic to blend into a crowd, to be nameless and removed from national attention. His mother constantly remarks how amusing it is to act like a stranger in the city her sons learned to walk in. (“It’s like we’re living a secret life! Like we’re imposters among all these different people from all these different places!”)

On a cold Tuesday morning, just as snow begins to trickle from the clouds, the two of them visit Himeji Castle. The structure looks like an egret taking flight. It is still as grand as it was to Atsumu’s elementary school eyes, and he thinks, again, about how some edifices manage to withstand time.

His mother suggests they tour the inside of the castle too. It’s crowded, sure, and they’ve both climbed the steep stairs several times, but it’s just one of those things that you do if you can, she reminds him. 

Atsumu looks down at his open hands. Then he looks at the castle, the walls whispering white. He doesn’t feel all that inclined to enter it. He has no explanation why. 

“You know, honey, we don’t actually have to go inside,” his mother amends, intervening before Atsumu can try to let her down easily. She must have swum through his cluttered thoughts again, waded in his uncertain emotions the way only a mother can.

A meter behind her, Atsumu’s body relaxes in a sigh of relief.

Miya Emiko tugs her purse closer to her body. She tilts her head to the side and says thoughtfully, “I’ve always believed that everything is prettier from afar, anyway.”

Eleven days into his stay, Atsumu awakens in the dead of night. Deciding a glass of water might spur some drowsiness, he treads downstairs, careful not to wake his sleeping mother.

Assuming his mother hasn’t rearranged the kitchen after he graduated, cups are in the cabinet directly above the sink. Atsumu raises his hand as if to reach for a glass, but he hovers, hesitant. Then, he veers to the side. 

The rightmost cabinet of the kitchen sits alone with itself, untouched by anyone but his mother. Because the hinge is broken, the door remains slightly ajar, as if to perpetually extend an invitation. In twenty-four years, Atsumu has never bothered to accept.

Tonight, he wraps his hand around the jade knob and tugs, his quest for water long forgotten. 

It’s nothing fancy, really. A wooden panel divides the cabinet into two shelves. The upper-level houses pill bottles, common cold remedies, and first aid supplies for all of the times Atsumu and his brother have almost killed each other. Organized for easy access, the labels of the bottles all face outward. 

Old, useless junk clutters the bottom shelf of the cabinet: Forgotten grocery lists dusted in decades of stillness. The weathered lanyard from Atsumu’s first volleyball camp. A photo of his parents in Hong Kong, dated four years before he was born. They look happy. They don’t look tired.

He continues to sift through the ephemera. 

Among the ripped recipes and countless bill statements, he spots a notebook. It is baby blue and small enough to fit in his palm. The bubbly characters at the top read “boshi kenkou techou.” Mother and Child Health Handbook. In the bottom corner, his full name is handwritten: Miya Atsumu. Furigana dance above the kanji.

Though the label may say otherwise, the book is his mother’s through and through. When a woman becomes pregnant, she receives a government-issued pocketbook to store data about her baby. These books are essential for raising a healthy child. 

Atsumu opens the book.

Inside, there is everything he could have ever asked about relating to his infancy. His mother’s ebbing morning sickness at the end of her first trimester. The diameter of his head when he first opened his eyes (two centimeters larger than Osamu’s). Vaccination records, dental records, nutrition records. The beginning on dotted lines. Documentation in lieu of remembrance.

Atsumu reads the book all the way through, and then he cries.

Winter break does not bleed thin and wide like Chinese ink. It passes swift and smooth, like a ball arcing through bright air. Before Atsumu can beat his fastest time to the train station—a record set during his second year of high school—he is hugging his mother goodbye and tucking a bento for the road under his arm. (The container is wrapped in his grade school blue-polka dotted furoshiki.)

“Why do you look nervous?” his mother asks when she pulls away from her hug. “That’s not like you.”

Atsumu shrugs, studies the laces of his shoes. “Guess I’m just worried that I’ll forget to talk to ya for a while."

A bright chortle causes Atsumu to look up. His mother looks proud. Jaded, too. Sad, some. And then she’s saying to him, “How about this: update me whenever you have a good day.”

The ground does not sway below his feet. The train station smells like lemon. 

“You could call or send a text,” his mother continues, her bony hands turning over each other, speaking for themself. “That part doesn’t matter. Just let me know any time you have a good day.”

Her instructions are far too vague. What is a “good day”? Is this definition subjective? More specifically, can a day be “good” even if it includes “bad” events? How significant of a difference is there between a good day and a fine, average day? Does he tell his mother when he has a “good day” in terms of his arbitrary ranking, or when he thinks she’d classify his day as good?

“Honey, I can see the gears turning in your head.” 

Atsumu hugs his bento closer to him. The knot of the furoshiki digs into his ribcage. “What if I don’t have a good day for a while?”

It’s a fair question, but it wasn’t what he’d been pondering. 

His mother’s answer is a smack across the back of the head. “You don’t have to only talk to me when you have a good day!” She sends a laugh skyward. “But who knows? Maybe this will encourage you to have better days.”

Atsumu swears he can feel a white-hot handprint in his hair. He rubs at his scalp and musters a smile. And then his train is approaching, and he’s heaving his bestial bag into the car, and his mother’s thinning figure is blurring into another memory. 

He leaves Amagasaki knowing a few things: napolitan always tastes better home-cooked. His mother has known him longer than he’s known himself. Jade handles bend moonlight. 

Himeji Castle is pretty when it dusts white with snow. 

It doesn’t take long for Atsumu to learn good days are harder to come by than bad days. There are many small, common triggers for said bad days: fortuitous knee pain, too much snapping at Osamu over the phone, a bloody nose. But a shitty practice is what most often knocks a day down from average to poor. 

Tonight, Atsumu’s tosses are particularly slimy. They reach an agreeable height, but his spikers can’t get a clean hit on them. Coach Foster threatens to pull him out more than once, but the wavering trust of his teammates is a worse punishment. Barnes and Bokutou’s smiles grow flimsy. Through the net, Shouyou has trouble meeting his eyes. 

Atsumu continues playing through his teammates’ lack of faith. Middle school taught him how to work in a stilted dynamic like this. He occupies himself with looking busy during water breaks, and he keeps sending up sets even if they’re imperfect, and this is enough. Miya Atsumu knows how to give the cold shoulder, and he knows how to shoulder cold. 

Because the universe does not stop for anyone, practice still concludes at 8:30 PM on the dot—just like the day before that, and the day before that. While showering, Atsumu visualizes the water washing away his mistakes. It doesn’t, but the image brings his blood down from a boil to a simmer, and breathes a little deeper for the seven minutes he is under the spray.

One by one, the MSBY Black Jackals shuffle out of the locker room. Atsumu pauses his skincare and haircare routine to wave goodbye to each of them. They all wave back, which has to count for something.

Cheeks soft and hair conditioned, he is the last one to leave the locker room at nine PM. Atsumu tells himself that he is good over and over again, as he zips up his jacket and hoists on his duffel bag and closes the door behind him.

As he rounds the first corner on the path back to the dorms, a murky voice calls out, “What’s ‘good’?” 

Sakusa Kiyoomi waits beneath a weeping wisteria tree. Its buds are just beginning to burgeon. 

“Why are ya still here, Omi-kun?” Atsumu asks, rather than answering Sakusa’s question.

“It looked like you had an off day, so I was waiting for you,” Sakusa says as an explanation, which doesn’t explain much of anything. 

“Oh.” Atsumu swallows the knot in his throat. “Thanks, Omi-kun.” 

Omi-kun. 

Kiyoomi. 

Atsumu is waiting for the day Sakusa Kiyoomi’s name does not leave a bitter taste in my mouth. He can shout those three syllables in the middle of matches and call them across the kitchen, yes, but they still make his gums ache with words unsaid. Atsumu knows himself well enough to accept that he hasn’t moved on. He hasn’t really forgiven Sakusa or himself. He still winces under the weight of his regrets sometimes. 

But everything goes and goes.

“Miya-kun, would you like to get bubble tea together?” Sakusa is looking just above Atsumu’s right ear, but it’s a very good try at making eye contact. His invitation is strained but sincere. 

It is the second of March, and the nights are beginning to approach slower. The world around Atsumu feels atmospheric; he cannot differentiate where the street ends and the sky starts. And in the middle of the muzzy resolution, Sakusa Kiyoomi looks like an afterthought. 

Atsumu gnaws his teeth to numbness. Then, he inhales. “I think I’m okay without going, Omi-kun. For bubble tea, I mean.” 

It’s because the seasons are changing—it must be.

Sakusa does not look taken aback. He nods to himself, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Okay. Take care of yourself, Miya-kun.” 

Atsumu screws his expression into a smile, brushes a hand through his hair. “I will,” he says, instead of “you too.” And then he waits to see if Sakusa will walk away. 

But it is not a matter of if; it is a matter of when. There are some things stronger, sharper than the will of a twenty-four-year-old. Atsumu is certain of this. The sun will burn without oxygen, and Osaka will reek of rain in just two months, and Sakusa Kiyoomi will walk away. He will not look back. 

Atsumu lingers to watch, anyway, hand tight around the strap of his duffel bag. He lingers until Sakusa is a thumbprint against the flickering city, until he is a mere mark left by a leaky pen. 

The moon orbits the earth.

(There is another universe, out there. One that is parallel and perpendicular and blissful in all of the blue ways. With time as straight as mountain ridges. 

In this one, Sakusa Kiyoomi does not walk away. In this one, he calls out to Atsumu.

But we mustn’t occupy ourselves with too many realities.)

“Hey, MSBY Black Jackals fans! Miya Atsumu here, and I’ll be takin’ over the team’s Instagram account for the day.” Atsumu flashes his best, glossiest smile at the front camera and then winks. “I know it’ll be tough to get more engagement than our Ninja Shouyou did last week, but I still gotta try! So, stay tuned!”

Behind Atsumu, a shock of flaming orange hair creeps into the frame. He tenses the hand holding his phone just as Shouyou pounces on him, and the resulting shake is barely even picked up by the camera.

“Atsumu-san,” Shouyou begins, “is this for Instagram?” Something scintillates in his eye—subtle like the trail of a comet, easier to see if you don’t look at it straight. It might be mischief. 

This stardust does not faze Atsumu. Shouyou might do his fair share of embarrassing, but his antics are always more dilatory than they are demeaning. 

“I know ya know it’s for Instagram, Shou-kun,” Atsumu responds, placing a hand on his hip. “So ya better say hi to the camera!” 

His teammate waves a hand in greeting, as if he hasn’t been in Atsumu’s stories for the last minute and a half. 

“Shouyou and I are at a promo shoot right now for Lemon Energy Sports Drinks,” Atsumu says, turning back to the camera. “They’re available at yer local grocery and convenience stores, and we can’t get enough of ‘em!”

This assertion isn’t a lie, and Atsumu is grateful for that. He’s done his fair share of advertising piss-poor products, which is to say that it’s nice promoting something that doesn't make his sense of morality quail. 

“Yeah, I love drinking a Lemon Energy Sports Drink before I start lifting,” Shouyou adds. "It gives me just the extra power I need!”

During the months of June, July, and August, weekly Instagram takeovers foreshadow the MSBY Black Jackals’ competitive season. Increased social media presence and insight into players’ daily lives both stoke the fire of engagement, effectively killing two birds with one stone. And, well, the ego boost that comes with the surplus of comments toward the player taking over is a third bird in a way, too. 

At the end of the Lemon Energy promotional shoot, Atsumu asks the set’s photographer if she’d be willing to take a photo of Shouyou and him for the MSBY Instagram. (“Since ya are a professional and all.”) They flash matching peace signs as Muramoto-san snaps the picture. Atsumu uploads the photo to his story, adding several firework gifs along with a question box captioned: “Ask me anything!” Then he heads to the gym for a romantic afternoon with barbells and resistance bands, technology abandoned.

Two hours and two hundred squats later, Atsumu picks up his phone to share a gratuitous, post-workout selfie. Then, he checks the responses to his previous story.

There are a surprising number of entries so far—possibly enough to surpass Shouyou. A majority of the questions ask about Atsumu’s interests. What is his favorite flavor of beer? Are there any foods he cannot stand? Did his family have a pet growing up? When is he collaborating with Onigiri Miya again? (Atsumu elects to ignore answering that question, but he does respond to the text Osamu sent him last night.) Aside from curiosity regarding his personal life, a good handful of questions are from aspiring volleyball players. They ask about his meal plan, setting advice, and strength training regime. 

Finally, the remaining portion of questions aren’t even questions.

“You’re my favorite volleyball player of all time, Miya-senshu!”

“Genetics go absolutely crazyyy. Miya-senshu is the best-looking player in the V.League, or maybe the whole world o__O”

“Miya-senshu I would lay down my life to touch your biceps.”

Praise-addled and dangerously gratified, Atsumu stumbles back into the locker room and lets himself collapse onto one of the benches. 

“I would kill to be able to set with your level of precision, Miya-senshu! Hoping to attend one of your clinics one day!”

“... You deserve an award for your quads, Miya-senshu …”

And then, nestled among the deluge of acclaim, he sees it—the only entry that doesn’t contain the word “senshu”:

“Miya-kun, I sent you a message a while back. I know it’s been years, but I hope you’re doing well!”

The fateful question that isn’t a question comes from a private account with the username mwatanabe_9. The user’s display name is Watanabe Mina. In the pixelated profile picture, a woman sits among lush hanging plants. A sky blue blouse drapes on her frame, her hair swept behind her shoulders. The lighting makes her look transposed over the lustrous background. And she looks like something out of a dream. 

Miya Atsumu has only met one Watanabe Mina in his life.

He elbows his way out of the gym and opens his direct messages as hurriedly as he can. An entire lifetime seems to pass as he scrolls through the tab, and just when he is thinking of tossing his phone at the pavement, he sees it. An oddity. A single scribble on a page, a pen mark left on a pocket: 

Watanabe Mina has sent you a message request. 

The direct message is dated March 28th—almost three months ago. Atsumu’s mouth blues as he accepts it. He lets his back crash against the side of the nearest building. 

From @mwatanabe_9

“Hi, Miya-kun! Or I guess I should say Miya-senshu now, right? ♪(๑ᴖ◡ᴖ๑)♪ 

This is Watanabe Mina from Inarizaki High :) I was the tall girl who swam. I’m not sure if you remember me, but we were classmates our first and second year.”

Of course, Atsumu remembers Watanabe. How could he not? He scrolls down to her second message, thankful for the grounding presence of the ugly wall behind him. 

“How have you been? You and I didn’t really keep in touch. I guess we didn’t have a reason to. 

After high school, I went to college in Tokyo, and my family moved to a suburb an hour away from me. Amagasaki was left behind. I had to restart my life, but I’m sure you did too, so I’ll spare you the dramatics. 

Above him, the skies roil like oceans. The world is thrown in shades of gray, and a single drop of rain splashes Atsumu's hand. 

"I never really planned to come back to this prefecture. I thought I would live and die in Tokyo without ever thinking about Hyōgo or Amagasaki or high school again. But I was transferred to Higashiosaka about a month ago, and I don’t know. I guess the past has a way of creeping up to you. I realized that your team was located here and was reminded of our time together. The spring of our youth. We were so young back then, weren’t we?”

A steady drizzle has erupted from the heavens by now. Raindrops collect on the corner of Atsumu’s screen. His heart claws at his throat. 

“Anyways, sorry for such a long message. Last but not least, I just wanted to wish you luck during your upcoming season. I know you’ll do great; you always have. If you have no idea who I am, I sincerely apologize for the informality. Stay healthy and go for it, Miya-kun! <3”

Atsumu decides to take Watanabe’s advice. He walks home at a pace bordering on a jog, frenetically showers, and downs a Lemon Energy Sports Drink as his post-workout snack. Then, he goes for it. 

[June 16th, 3:17 PM]
From @miyaatsumu

“Watanabe-san, sorry for replying to this so late! I don’t check my dms often … 

But I remember you. How have you been (beyond what you wrote in your message)? To answer your question, I feel like I’ve been the same as I was in high school, but different, too. I guess. That’s probably a shitty explanation. I think I’m better at talking than I am typing. Is there any way we’d be able to meet up in person one day? It’s no problem if you don’t want to! I get that it’s kinda weird after six years.

Thanks for your message :)”

Twenty-four minutes later, while Atsumu is half-heartedly watching the pilot of Osamu’s latest Kdrama recommendation, his phone pings.

[June 16th, 3:41 PM]
From @mwatanabe_9

“That sounds lovely.”

By the end of the day, Atsumu has surpassed Shouyou in question responses and scheduled dinner with Watanabe in two weeks. 

The restaurant they end up at isn’t one Atsumu would have chosen himself. For one, there’s the factor of distance. It’s just a few blocks away from Watanabe’s work but over a half-hour walk from the Jackals’ dorms. Additionally, based on the non-existent social media presence, it isn’t exactly a go-to spot for young adults. Atsumu likes to think he isn’t so shallow as to judge a restaurant based on its popularity, but he does tend to frequent more up-and-coming places, if any at all. Lastly, the restaurant serves strictly Western food. That alone docks off five points in Atsumu’s book. 

He agrees to the incognito restaurant regardless. He owes it to someone—maybe Watanabe, maybe himself.

At seven PM, Atsumu is straightening out the creases in his button-up. At 7:02 PM, he is out the door, creasing his shirt once again. At 7:35 PM, a host ushers him to a reserved table in the back of the restaurant.

Watanabe Mina sits patiently, thumbing through her email or perhaps an article on her phone. At the mellow skitter of the host returning to his stand, she looks up. “Miya-kun,” she acknowledges, tucking her phone in her purse. “Or perhaps Miya-senshu is more appropriate now, isn’t it?”

Atsumu takes a seat across from her. He feels like he’s stepped back in time. “Ya know that I’ve always preferred just Atsumu, Watanabe-san.”

A kind grin graces Watanabe’s porcelain skin. Atsumu can see the smile lines that form around the corners of her mouth. They don’t mar her skin.

“You should really just call me Mina, then, Atsumu-kun.”

Touché.

“All right.” Atsumu brings himself to say her name. “All right, Mina.” He needs to buy time to calm his thudding heart, so he scoops seconds off the shelves by cracking his knuckles. A habit from his mother, perhaps. “How did ya get here before me? I thought ya had work.” 

Mina tosses her hair over one shoulder, the ring on her index finger catching in a dark strand. “My boss let me go early. I told him I had to catch up with an Olympic prospect.”

Atsumu laughs. “I ain’t even thinkin’ about the Olympics yet!”

The woman he hasn’t spoken to in half a decade shrugs. “It doesn’t hurt to stretch the truth sometimes,” she replies, winking like a mirror image of Atsumu. 

They talk about their lives, filling each other in on the last six years of radio silence and the eighteen years that came before those. It’s easier to talk to Mina than Atsumu envisioned. 

He mentions this to her, and she tells him that it must be because they’re both settled now. “It’s a lot easier to have a conversation when you’re not worried about stepping on someone else’s toes,” she continues, and the soapy memory of her confession floats to the top of his mind. Atsumu nods solemnly in agreement, and then Mina teases him for his sudden seriousness. And their dialogue runs clear again.

A waitress arrives when they’re in the thick of the conversation. She is a young woman—a college student, likely—with wide-set eyes and a pen behind her ear. Smiling, she says, “I take it you two have either just met or have known each other for years.”

“It’s a little of both, actually,” Mina returns before ordering a decaffeinated coffee and the seasonal pasta.  

Atsumu is trapped in spring throughout the dinner as he discovers more about Mina. He talks—really, truly talks—more than he has in the past twelve months. The ceiling lights are yellow, but the restaurant feels blue. Before Atsumu registers that he has melted into the restaurant’s poignant atmosphere, all other patrons have cleared out. It is a quarter to nine with a lavender sky, and the place closes in fifteen minutes. 

Outside, the clouds weep.

“Do ya come here often?” Atsumu asks, stirring his straw around the ice cubes clustered at the bottom of his glass.

“I used to,” Mina says. “When I first moved to Higashiosaka. But I forgot about it until just a few weeks ago when you and I were discussing possible dinner locations.”

“Does that make ya sad?” Atsumu asks, without really knowing why.

Mina’s thick eyebrows knit together. She takes a final sip of her coffee, swallows, and then asks, “Does what make me sad? Forgetting?”

Atsumu nods, opting for body language rather than speech. It must be because they’re in the middle of the rainy season. 

Somehow, Mina laughs. “No, it doesn’t make me sad. It’s one of my favorite parts of life, actually: being able to forget things and then remember them again.” She beams down at her empty mug as if something is swirling in it that only she is privy to. “Doesn’t it just make you so happy to rediscover something for the first time in months? Years?”

“I haven’t thought of it that way before,” Atsumu admits. Then: “Is that what happened with me?”

“I think so,” Mina agrees, looking up at him. “I’ve realized that I think about you more when I’m happier.”

“Oh.” Atsumu wants to put his foot through the wall, but he’s never been more at peace.

“You know, in all honesty, I think there is a part of me that will always be charmed by you.” Watanabe Mina smiles airily and exhales a petal-pink breath. “I would have been obsessed with you, Atsumu-kun, if only you had let me.”

Atsumu’s heart does something like break. 

Mina sets down her mug. “I should get going,” she announces, folding her cloth napkin. “I had a wonderful time catching up with you, Atsumu-kun. I hope we can again, someday soon.” 

And then his old classmate is leaving uncrumpled bills on the table and heading toward the door. And then Atsumu finds himself rising, too, knees unhinging and shoulders rolling back, and he’s running out of the restaurant with a tinkle of a bell. (He returns a few seconds later to pay for his half of the meal, only to find that Mina had already covered it.)

His dinner definitively covered, Atsumu exits the restaurant again. He rakes his eyes across the road, looking for Watanabe Mina as much as he is answers, but all he spies is drunk bicyclists and ambulatory travelers. So a minute into his search, he lets his tattooed heart stop palpitating. Atsumu thinks about his mother’s words, and he pauses to listen, to touch, and to look. It goes like this: 

1. The sound of the street is white and clean. 
2. The rain caresses his skin like velvet.
3. There is a puddle forming in the middle of the crosswalk, ugly and unyielding. 

His feet start him home. Miya Atsumu is moving on. 

There was a story about goldfish that Atsumu’s father told him, once. It went like this:

Two young fish are swimming along when they come across an older fish. 

“Good morning!” the older fish greets. “How’s the water?” Then it swims away. 

The two young fish continue on for a while, and eventually, one turns to the other and asks, “What the hell is water?”

His father never explained what the parable meant. At twenty-four, Atsumu thinks he’s closer to understanding. 

There is a FamilyMart about five minutes away from the MSBY Black Jackals’ living complex. Craving a drink after his curious dinner, Atsumu ducks into the convenience store on his way home. 

Tonight, his want can be fulfilled easily. He grabs a gallon-sized bottle of water and a can of chamomile tea off the highest refrigerated shelf, then heads to the checkout counter.

“Good evenin’,” the cashier greets, applying a dollop of hand sanitizer before beginning the checkout procedure. She is older than his mother. There are patches of gray in her short, permed hair. 

“Evenin’,” Atsumu returns gently.

“Did ya do anything tonight, son?”

“Met up with kinda an old friend,” he says, placing his two items on the counter. “What about yerself?”

“Oh, I work until eleven.” The woman picks up the bottle of water, turns it over to find the barcode. “But after that, I’m celebratin’ my fortieth anniversary with my husband.”

Forty years. Almost twice his entire lifespan. “That’s a long time to stay in love.” 

“Ain’t it? But I’ve always believed that love is half feelin’ and half choice.” Barcode located, she scans the bottled water. “The feelin’ part is easy, but makin’ the same choice every day can take a toll on ya. Choosin’ to compromise, choosin’ to make room for someone else in yer life.”

Atsumu nods. He can’t contribute much to her theory, so he mumbles, “That sounds about right.”

“How about you?” the woman asks. When Atsumu bites his lip, unsure, she follows up with, “Have ya been choosin’ someone lately?”

It must be because of Mina, because of the weather—that Atsumu doesn’t find himself adverse to the question. Just pensive. 

“No, I haven’t,” he admits, taking out his wallet. “Haven’t been choosin’ no one for a while now.”

The woman scans his can of chamomile. “Well, that means you’ve been choosin’ yerself, then. Now, cash or card?”

In a daze, Atsumu reaches for his card. His breathing is smoke-quiet as he pads home in shy silence. He showers in arctic conditions because he never remembers that the temperature markings on his shower handle are reversed, and cold washings are probably better for the environment, anyway. Soaking in his desk drawer of a bathtub, bruised knees balled up to his heaving chest, Atsumu warms his neglected feelings in his hands. 

He towels off and slips into a bathrobe. He brushes his teeth. He goes to bed, and he dreams a dream. 

The rain in the morning is lulling and languid, heavy like a heartbeat. Through the grime on his bedroom window, Atsumu can see that the water hangs in the air for a beat before it crashes into the sidewalk. The grassy areas of the ground are morphing into sludge by the second. 

He decides to sacrifice his morning run to protect his new white shoes. Page-blank canvas and clear rubber soles don’t fare too well in even the lightest of showers, let alone weather that ranks right below a rainstorm. 

But other things do enjoy the rain. The wildflowers dotting the grass along the walkways seem to grow further up toward the sky than usual, embracing the downpour like it is an old friend. And even as their petals pound flat—even as they drown in mud—the flowers relish the rain. They know it is necessary for their cultivation, that it will pass. They understand that this, too, will become the past. 

Atsumu fumbles for his phone on his bedside table. He opens a new message to his mother: 

[7:17 AM]
“I had a good day, yesterday.”

Eight minutes later, she writes back: 

“Oh?? What happened!”

Nothing, Atsumu thinks. 

“Something,” he types, then sets his phone down. 

It is July, again. 

Miya Atsumu has learned that life is armed to the teeth, and he has bared his fangs in return. He is familiar with heartbreak. He’s not great at remembering to call his mom. He thinks too much and too little, and he still accidentally voices his thoughts aloud, and he will never be seventeen again. 

All of this he knows. 

Atsumu inhales a breath. 

And then he lets it go.