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1.
Atsumu’s name breaks open the darkness in front of Aran’s face. There it waits forebodingly, like a deeply weird eclipse, a definite bad omen, until he picks up the call.
Aran switches his bedside light on first, and a warm wash of yellow reveals: his vibrating phone, lit up with Atsumu’s contact details; a little analogue clock seconds away from ten pm, meaning it’s still a perfectly normal time to be awake (Aran, after decades of dawn training, reminds himself); a spike of dread as he remembers exactly why he doesn’t want to hear from Atsumu right now – or, more fairly, what. It’s been more than a decade, but he still remembers the fury in Atsumu’s tinny voice, plainly audible despite coming out of a phone which was mostly keyboard when Aran held it away from his ear with a performative eyeroll (only a few months out of high school and already feeling so old and so over it, which at least helped him pretend the news about Osamu wasn’t a fist to the stomach to him, too), the last time someone left Atsumu’s team.
It’s not the same, and Aran’s not so conceited as to believe Atsumu’ll feel the same either, but he’s still braced for some sort of anger when he clumsily hits the green button.
Atsumu lets him down; Atsumu makes him proud.
Yeah, Atsumu cuts right to the chase – “You’re off the national team?” he asks immediately – but there’s more understanding than accusation in the question. As Aran rubs his eyes, sits himself upright, it becomes clear that Atsumu has called, not to berate but to be a comfort, a shoulder, a friend, should Aran need that, which he does, really, now that he’s emerging on the other side of what was supposed to be a lifelong dream, by almost-mutual decision.
Despite his general malcontent at the moment, Aran smiles to himself. He can imagine Atsumu, lying across his sofa like he usually does (making the most of the space he has now Osamu’s not also taking it up), hair damp, phone by his side, talking energetically into the air. The image rises clearly for Aran, and with it, a deep affection for his longtime friend, one of the very few people who might actually understand. He feels bad for assuming otherwise and glad enough to overcome that, and turn it into teasing.
“You’re not mad I’m abandoning you, then?” Aran asks.
“Nah, course not,” Atsumu says. “You started before me, old man, so it makes sense you’d leave first too.”
“Old!” Aran splutters for a bit.
“Time comes for us all,” Atsumu continues, in a sage voice which means he’s either quoting or mocking someone more sensible than him.
“Does that mean you’re quitting next year, then? That’s how long after me you started, right. That’d be your time.”
That makes Atsumu splutter in turn, and then go quiet for a bit. Aran’s about to ask if he’s okay when his voice comes back. “So the way I see it, when we started, one year was like a full twenty percent of our lives. It was huge. Kids a year older really did seem older then. And one fifth of – how old are you? – thirty-one is…”
Atsumu trails off. Aran knows this silence is expectant, and with a sigh, he supplies: “Six years. And a bit.”
“Exactly! So I don’t have to retire until I’m at least thirty-seven. And a bit. Say forty.”
“That makes no sense. But I could hold you to it.”
“Don’t do that. They’ll probably never let me leave at all if they’re getting rid of all the other good players.”
Which, of course, is a lie. There are always other good players. That’s an eternal fact of volleyball. It’s been a source of worry since Aran’s began playing. It’s been a source of joy for just as long, though, and he won’t forget that now worry’s won out.
There’s a press release, which he also has to post simultaneously. He gets over a thousand comments from strangers, and a deluge of texts from all over the world, rousing his phone at all hours. He replies to the ones from friends, copies and pastes the same response to ones from agents and press and unknown numbers who seem to have some kind of stake in his career. He has a long talk with Shinsuke about endings. It’s such a successful dress rehearsal for retirement that he kind of has to remind himself he does still have a volleyball season to get back to; this isn’t the end of his career, no matter how old Atsumu thinks he is.
He doesn’t hear from Osamu at all. But then, Osamu’s busy.
Back when it opened, most people found out about the new onigiri shop (which was little more than a counter with a door, really) opening in Hyogo through hearsay. A friend, or maybe a friend-of-a-friend, had spotted the ajar door, gone to grab a snack, and (so the story seemed to inevitably go) experienced Ratatouille-style transportation at their first bite of balled rice. Such word couldn’t help but spread. New hands could be hired. New flavours tried.
In time, there were Onigiri Miya social media accounts, although at first these mostly posted about upcoming pop-up stall locations. Still, images of steaming, swelling onigiri were tagged, and those tags were clicked, and the word spread further. The shop moved to a bigger place.
Then a website was made, and in time, a better website, to coincide with a new location opening. The better website had a ‘Where to Find Us’ section with a map. On it, new tiny little onigiri logos steadily appeared, each marking the arrival of a new location, like so much spilled rice.
There’s one evening when Aran arrives back at Asahikawa Station, slung with bags of kit, exhausted, and the train pulls away like a curtain, grandly revealing the glowing Onigiri Miya sign waiting just beyond the platform, and he can’t immediately work out why it matters. Why it so immediately draws his eye. He doesn’t read the banner in the window, half off specials for this week only, to celebrate the opening. He looks unthinkingly at the logo. It’s so out of context, this far north: for a moment he takes the feeling of recognition to be to the logo alone. Like seeing a McDonalds. No big deal. There are branches everywhere, of course it feels so familiar. A moment later, though, he realises. Of course.
The first shop feels like a long time ago. It’s a pretty long way away, but it wasn’t then. Then, he still lived nearby, but he would have come much further to stand outside the shop – there wasn’t room for all of them, all the friends and all the curious, inside – for a moment with Atsumu and Shinsuke. They mimed cheering at Osamu through the window: on Aran’s left, Atsumu showboated, pretending to play the trumpet with his cheeks puffed out, whilst on his right, Shinsuke surreally shook a pair of imaginary pom poms. Unable to decide which way to look, Aran’s ended up catching Osamu’s eye and the two of them had laughed together, even though there was glass in the way, even though Osamu was mid-press interview, even though Atsumu was making horrible noises in Aran’s ear, together. Soon afterwards, there was time for talking and catching up and sharing congratulations around, but it had already become a day to remember.
Osamu hadn’t told him the Asahikawa Station branch was opening. Hadn’t told Aran he’d be in town. Through the window, Aran can only see cheery, anonymous faces behind the counter. The new shop fits right into the glossed and exposed station concourse, which is not a place for lingering, and despite the deals – limited time! – Aran rearranges his bags and leaves the station.
A little later, Shinsuke calls him, and while they talk, tells him that Onigiri Miya is a franchise now: people other than Osamu can open their version of the restaurant, with the branding and recipes. They have to sign a contract promising to use high quality ingredients and Osamu checks the applicants individually, assessing their commitment to welcome and rice. It’s about as personal as giving out cuttings of the thing you planted and grew and watered can be. But, Shinsuke implies, you still can’t tell what each branch might grow into.
So when they’re next texting, Aran congratulates Osamu on the expansion. Osamu quickly responds. ‘Did u eat there yet?’ Is it good, he asks. He hopes it is. It should be, but he can’t be sure.
2.
Gin is moving backwards through time. He’s listing off things Aran needs to update him on: starting most recently, with leaving the national team, then Paris (the Olympics, he adds, just in case Aran’s been making a habit of long flights and jetlag and rich, damp food), then the new team, his new life in Asahikawa, the move, the decision to make the move, his old team, his old place. By the time Gin has time-travelled back to when they last saw each other, both of them have realised it’s been longer than they thought, more than two years, and particularly full ones. Both of them have realised there’s not enough hours in the evening for Aran to answer everything Gin’s asking about, let alone start asking his own questions. They mutually slouch away from the subject, the gap, from catching up.
“I wonder who he’s looking for,” Aran says, nodding. Across the room, through the tall crowd, Atsumu moves blondely.
“Or what,” amends Gin. “He looks so shifty. Like an art thief scouting for a painting.”
“Don’t give him too much credit.”
“A pick-pocket, then. Oi, hide your valuables, here he comes.”
Aran tries not to laugh too obviously as Atsumu approaches with a false nonchalance which only makes him appear really guilty. “Whatcha talking about?” he asks.
In a moment, Gin has managed to switch on genuine, or at least genuine–sounding enthusiasm. “How cool the party is.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah! Great food, sports stars – it’s the event of the year.”
“It’s the event of the last thirty years!” Atsumu declares.
Gin says, “Better than all the volleyball?”, at the same time Aran says, “Don’t exaggerate.”
Still, the twins’ thirtieth birthday party is impressive. They’ve managed to rent the fancy restaurant at the top of one of Kobe’s high rises: the walls are mostly windows, and they shine like stained glass: the blue night is spangled by the city’s lights all around them. The Port Tower gleams like a sceptre. Inside, the tables have been pushed back, and there’s an impressive buffet bordering the room. Music pulses politely – Bokuto’s on the dance floor trying to make the most of it, and has even momentarily roped Shinsuke into bopping minutely alongside him – but for Aran so far, most of the evening has been about talking to interesting people. The party’s brought together the very best of Japan’s culinary and sporting worlds, whilst those from outside of either are their own type of impressive: people tough and quick enough to cling on to the whirl of the Miya twins themselves.
“It is fun, though,” Aran adds. As if on cue, to underline just how fun this place is, the DJ operating somewhere in the background yanks the volume up and dance music floods through the space. Behind Gin and Atsumu, Aran can see Shinsuke, with the timing and elegance of the dancer he is not, immediately disentangle himself from the dancefloor.
Atsumu grins. Then he leans in, now having to half-yell: “I’m trying to find Osamu. Either of you seen him?”
“Not for a while,” Gin shouts back. “He was in there earlier,” and waves a hand over towards the officially closed-off kitchen, which is secretly open to curious, respectful, culinary-minded guests. It’s also turned out to be literally open, but not at all welcoming, to people mistaking it for a route to the bathrooms: heads hung low over broad, athletic chests, with the metallic swing doors wagging sadly in their wake, have been a bit of a recurring image this evening, as volleyballers are chased away by the diminutive, scary and usually very expensive chef.
When he called with the invite for tonight, Atsumu had told Aran that the chef and Osamu were friends, that she was doing this as a favour for him. When he and Osamu had met with her to arrange details for their party, she’d been unsmiling the entire conversation, until Osamu cracked a lame joke. Then she’d laughed like magic. Thinking ahead about tonight, Aran had been looking forward to asking Osamu about how he’d managed to melt a soft spot into someone so cold, but he’s been here an hour and hasn’t seen Osamu once, although he has glanced through the porthole to spot the chef scowling behind a large knife.
“I haven’t seen him,” he says to Atsumu, who pulls a ‘that’s weird’ sort of face for a moment.
Aran shrugs back.
“I better keep looking anyway,” Atsumu says. “Our aunt won’t give me her present until he’s there too…” He’s already beating a retreat, his voice disappearing under the music. Someone immediately grabs him, shaking his hand: Atsumu’s answering grin looks careless.
“Maybe I’ll go look for Osamu by the buffet table now. Want any more food?” Gin asks. Aran shakes his head and they agree they’ll see each other later.
Although Aran had known the twins for ages by then, he’d had no clue when they were born until his second year at Inarizaki, their first. Not until the day of the birthday. Not until the evening, even. At morning practice, when they’d turned up, Osamu had been characteristically reserved, whilst Atsumu had driven forward through drills and sets with the moody determinism and unusual silence which the whole team had, by then, learnt to be cautious of. Outside, it rained.
Only after evening practice did Osamu produce a plastic box, and inside it, a cream-layered sponge cake so good they’d wrongly assumed it had been shop-bought: you should be a chef, someone might even have said.
Part of a huddle, tightly packed under a covered doorway, away from the grey autumn rain, Aran had eaten his slice and licked his fingers.
“Why didn’t you say anything earlier?” their then-captain, a personable and nosy blocker, had asked. Aran had liked him fine, but hadn’t heard from him since he graduated; he’d definitely not earned an invite the thirtieth birthday party.
“Didn’t want it to distract from practice,” Atsumu had said. Some air of fury lingered around him, although he ate with relish.
“Then why’d you make us cake? You didn’t have to.”
Osamu answered this time. “I wanted to.”
“That was nice,” the captain had said.
“Not really,” Osamu replied, which had stumped everyone and ended the conversation.
Only later, when Aran had complimented him again on the cake, Osamu’d described the making of it, the sifting and stirring and careful timing of it, with such a genuine and selfish joy that Aran knew for certain that he hadn’t been being nice about it at all.
After they’d actually been made, none of the twins’ choices had ever really been a surprise.
There’s a kind of waiting area before the main room of the restaurant, which Aran had passed through unthinkingly when he’d arrived, leaving his jacket on a rack to mingle at the soiree of coats and umbrellas there. He returns now, really just to get further away from the music, and is surprised to find the windowless cloakroom has become a place to be. Several people drift through the room like the ice cubes in their drinks, clinking unexpectedly together.
Aran is waved over by Samson Foster, the Jackals coach. Aran and Samson’s initially utilitarian relationship has become a genuine sort of friendship over the years: they usually end up chatting for a while at any kind of function or press event, making the most of the chance to speak English. Samson swears he’s not homesick, and has lived in Japan long enough that Aran almost believes him, except for the way he consistently gathers speakers of his first language around him whenever he can; in turn, Aran appreciates the chance to practice with someone who isn’t his mother. Otherwise, he risks forgetting words unrelated to family members and knitting, the key topics covered when they talk.
“Hello,” Samson says cheerily, switching immediately into English, despite his previous conversation being in Japanese. “Have you met this young man before? He was just telling me about rice.”
The young man in question is Shinsuke, who looks like he’s genuinely considering playing along with being a stranger. Aran can spot the slightly devious edge to his smile.
“Yes,” he replied, before Shinsuke has a chance to extend his hand to Aran to be shaken. “We went to high school together. With Atsumu and Osamu too.”
“Of course, I should have remembered.” Samson nods. “Must have been some school.”
“We are very proud of our classmates,” Shinsuke puts in in his excellent high school English. “Aran played very well last week. Did you see the game?”
They discuss the match for a few minutes, during which Aran and Samson do a good job of pretending they’re not in competition, and Shinsuke plays umpire, smiling pleasantly and ignoring the tension. Aran keeps aware of him the whole time, making sure he’s following, but Shinsuke can follow the conversation fine: so much of volleyball is loan words anyway, and the parts that aren’t were pestered out of Aran across many school training sessions, so that for a while, Inarizaki were able to confuse opposing teams by suddenly making calls in a different language.
When Samson excuses himself to refill his drink, though, it’s like a switch is flipped. Shinsuke face grows sombre, although all he asks, in Japanese, is: “Have you wished the twins happy birthday yet?”
Aran shakes his head, then nods. “I mean, all I’ve been doing is celebrating their birthday,” he says. “But I’ve only seen Atsumu.”
“That’s what I thought,” Shinsuke says, a little sadly. “You really should make sure to speak to Osamu tonight.”
“I’m trying to look for him,” Aran says. He hasn’t realised he was, until just then, but it isn’t a lie. “Atsumu’s been recruiting people to find him.”
“I don’t mean you should find him for Atsumu,” Shinsuke says. “You two need to talk. The two of you need to sort this out tonight.”
“Sort what?”
But Shinsuke only smiles kindly. Aran suddenly feels tremendous sympathy for Atsumu. Usually, he’s dismissive when Atsumu complains about Shinsuke’s tranquil, opaque mysteriousness, because he usually knows what’s happening beneath the still and silent surface of the pond that is Shinsuke, and is able to think, well, it’s for his own good. Not so this evening. Shinsike apparently has developed machinations and confidences directed at Aran. And it turns out that is very annoying. So Aran beams apologies in the direction he last saw Atsumu, and tries not to feel too frustrated at himself for moving to the other end of the country, away from Shinsuke’s shore.
“You should look for him outside,” Shinsuke says.
3.
In Paris, they watched gymnastics. They got to see Japan’s men’s team win gold. Kageyama Tobio saw the empty horizontal bars and said, ‘It’s like two nets.’ It wasn’t. The gymnast turned around it, so deft and strong that it almost seemed like the air was holding him up. “He’s like the ball,” Hinata said. “On the best days.”
They ate illicit frites. Someone ordered snails. After the rainy opening ceremony, there was hot weather. Banners danced along boulevards around the stadium.
Aran went to the Louvre on his rest day. Second time around, he enjoyed where they were. Tagged along to see some beach volleyball. Goshiki from the Green Rockets surprised everyone by knowing everything about skateboarding. Aran now knows something about skateboarding. The Eiffel Tower glowed in the night. (“I prefer the Port Tower,” Atsumu pouted, proud with competitiveness.)
But most of all, for Aran, there was volleyball.
Before Paris (months before, but months before is still before: everything had been orientated towards the city for most of three years at that point), Aran got hurt. Only slightly! Nothing to worry about, he replied to Atsumu and Osamu, after their texts arrived a second apart, after his fall and awkward attempt to break it was televised. It’s not bad, he told his mum and then, using a thesaurus, tried a new English word: negligible. She pulled a face, refused to be distracted by language. He ended up telling her, and Shinsuke, and his coach, what his physical therapist had told him.
Basically, that he needed to be careful.
Basically, that the issue was the twin shoots of strain in his fingers and the cautiousness those planted in him, grown together and around each other and off up his arm, if he wasn’t careful. He was careful. It made things differently worse. His off days became more frequent and on them, his spikes were milder, his jumps timidly curled inward. His technique frayed at the edges.
He became used to spending more time on the bench than off it, of being brought on to shake things up, not taken off to rest and rebuilt. Not a pillar of strength, but an abrupt explosion of it. He’d become a new type of player, late and against his will
During National Team trainings, he’d look up and accidentally meet Atsumu’s long, serious and completely unapologetic gaze. He would inevitably get a text from Osamu afterwards too, the amount of afterwards it might take Atsumu and Osamu to check in with to each other.
And that began to get on his nerves. ‘S like being worried about by his kid brothers. Or worse, his equals. The fact they had the time to look out for him meant they were pulling ahead faster him. His dislike of that feeling took Aran beyond the self-pity he’s been toying with indulging. After all. He still played. He still wowed. People yelled, then hushed, when he stepped onto court.
The tension between Aran and Atsumu only broke over food: fittingly, as if Osamu was there in spirit, urging them to get over it at this post-training, five-minute-walk, first-place-we-came-across grabbed meal. Most of it was awkward, silent. Their noodles steamed. It was probably the politest meal they’d ever had: Atsumu didn’t speak with his mouth open once. Both wanted to mention it and neither wanted to. Eventually, bowl almost empty, poking after the last few illusive bean sprouts, Aran had given in, put down his chopsticks, and asked if Atsumu ever thought worse of Shinsuke for not being on court.
“No,” said Atsumi. “No, obviously not.” His eyes had glazed over slightly and his face started looking almost haunted, presumably at the thought of what Kita would do if Atsumu were ever to judge him for that.
“So,” replied Aran.
“Yeah,” Atsumu said, getting it.
In Paris, then, Aran did not play the volleyball he’d imagined. Not the way he and Atsumu and Osamu had dreamed up together, kicking up dust outside the school gates: ace and setter and wildcard. Not like he’d planned three years ago, fresh from the Tokyo Olympics and already working out how to do the next one better. But he played well. He changed the course of a set or two. There’s cheers, all his. He played volleyball.
At some point, there’d been a new team founded, up in Asahikawa But it’d been prowling the second division, and Aran hadn’t been paying attention. So it had taken him by surprise when this new team had crouched, and got ready to leap, its eyes clearly trained on Division 1’s jugular.
The second surprise was an email, inviting him to come to a match and meet the coaches afterwards.
It’d been an invitation which Aran had no reason to expect. At first, he ignored the obvious implication, and lingered in unnecessary, silent confusion. He was getting old and breaking down, wasn’t he? He couldn’t think why they’d want him. He hadn’t thought about why he kept silent, either.
But he accepted the invite anyway. And whilst watching the Asahikawa Hibagons’ messy victory over the Yotsuya Motor Spirits, he understood.
He’d spent his professional career until then with the Tachibana Red Falcons, a team which favoured brawny, tall, powerful, but most of all, disciplined players. The team fell on their opponents like waves, endlessly pressing forward. And behind them, and keeping them focused, keeping them pressing on, was a sea of constantly emerging new players, just as tall and strong, and ready to step in should any individual stumble. And Aran had. There wasn’t a place on the team for someone who played like he’d come to. He’d have been washed away soon.
The Asahikawa Hibagons were different. Like the Falcons, they were made up of individuals, but at the Falcons, that selfishness kept players from stepping on other toes: that might cause a wobble, which might make you look bad. The Hibagons were made up of young, talented players, brought in from all over the world, and none of them could actually play with each other. Their being on the same team had nothing to do with anything. From the stands, Aran had watched them crash together, sometimes literally, and win nevertheless, but narrowly.
They needed someone to calm the others, ground them. The Hibagons needed experience; the Falcons didn’t. And Aran had been playing a long time.
Plus, yeah. The offer was good.
So he joined the Asahikawa Hibagons for their first year in Division 1. He found the move intense, the new city large and disorientating. But all the familiar faces still smiled at him at matches, when he arrived with the away team after a long flight, and the new ones looked up to him with interest, when he offered some advice or word of warning in the patchwork of languages the team pulled together. He was steady and calm. Barely yelled, and dodged the antics, mostly. He had chosen to become a new kind of player, on a new team in a new place, which was a genuinely wonderful thing to discover he still got to do.
Back. Back out of the lobby, towards the exit. But past the elevators, still opening doors to dispel more of the interesting friends of his interesting friends. Down a corridor, towards another glittering view, framed in a massive picture window, then through a glass door so well-fitted into that window that it’s near impossible to distinguish it from the glass which doesn’t open. If it wasn’t for the sight of Osamu’s back on the other side, Aran wouldn’t have known to look for, and therefore would have missed, the whisper of a crack and subtle push-panel which obeys him only with a loud, undignified scrape.
Osamu swears, jumps around. “There’s a door there?” he says, alarmed.
“How else did you get out here?” Aran asks, and Osamu jerks his head along the balcony, indicating a far less stylish but far more obvious door.
“It’s how the kitchen staff get out for their smoke breaks,” he says, leaning forward again, onto the barrier which separates them from the sky (more glass). His hands are empty, and white with cold, wrapped up as they are in the November wind. “Kimura-san said she’d protect me if anyone started asking after me.”
“Atsumu was.”
Osamu rolls his eyes. “Earlier he was saying he wants to give a big spontaneous speech. Us two, together, as a double act. If he just wanted to perform, he should have decided that before this afternoon. We could have booked him a karaoke room and saved a ton of effort.”
Aran hasn’t seen Osamu in months, and considers him sidelong whilst he speaks. He looks well. He looks strong, in a fancy silky shirt and suit trousers, both tasteful and revealing. The weight of the business he’s carrying must be keeping him fit.
Should Aran raise whatever it is that Kita thinks they need to broach? Not yet, he thinks. Not straight on. Mostly because he doesn’t even know what it is they’d be talking about.
“It’s a great party,” Aran says. “Gin’s event of the year.”
Osamu snorts. “Yeah, well. He has a horrible singing voice so he’s probably just glad to have escaped the karaoke.”
Aran makes a weird noise then, part way between a tut and a laugh, which makes sense because he’s just tried to do both at once. “What about you?” he then asks, leaning sideways so he is facing Osamu properly, although Osamu continues to lean forward, looking towards the skyline which speckles the night. “You’re enjoying your own party so much you’ve snuck out for an hour long smoke break.”
“Nah, you’ve got me all wrong,” Osamu says lightly. “I’ve been in the kitchen most of that time. Prepping salmon. That’s the only smoking for me. I just came out here a couple of minutes ago, to see what it was like. And to try and get rid of the fishy smell.”
On cue, a breath of breeze ruffles his hair.
“Glad to hear you’re not avoiding everyone,” says Aran. Just me, he suddenly thinks, and is surprised at yourself.
“No,” agrees Osamu. “Not everyone.” And they’re both surprised to hear the implicit, only you.
4.
Osamu barely gets to use his hands anymore. Or, well, they’re always in use: laid flat, fingers twitching slightly. He writes emails, he scrolls through proposals, invoices, other emails which he then has to reply to. He makes orders and gives orders. Flat hands, only fingertips in play: it’s how Atsumu sets when he’s feeling really mean, doesn’t want to give anything away. Osamu could play like that too, or at least mimic it for a few seconds, but it’d only been fun for him when it was a rarity. A movement which connects with something interesting and different in the next play.
Now, he barely gets to make food. Making is a whole hand thing: his hands mould rice, sculpt dough, pull new shapes into being. It’s a whole arm thing: he rolls his sleeves up and plunges down into full, aromatic mixing bowls. It’s a body thing, a posture thing: he stands right, moves skilfully.
He can’t admit this yet, especially since his still, stiff hands represent success and profit, those most traditional markers of happiness, but when he’s stayed late in his office, his white spreadsheet screen casting ghostlight through the dark room, and one of Aran or Atsumu or Suna or anyone’s matches is on live in the background, the commentators chanting disembodied in the quiet air around him, he’ll get jealous, thinking about what he’s lost, thinking maybe he’s lost.
Anyway. Mostly he doesn’t think that. He makes elaborate dinners on his evenings off. He cheers on the Jackals; he’s proud of Tsumu. And he’s a total fan of Aran Ojiro.
He’s been a fan of Aran forever. He’s been a fan since he was 10. That was when Aran was 11, and hadn’t been the tallest kid in the sports hall, but in sheer presence, had been the biggest: everyone waited to see what he’d do. Already and always. When he spiked, even back then, even with the technical askewness which comes with kid giddiness and still growing, everyone shut up. At least, it felt that way to Atsumu and Osamu, watching. All the stupid talk about names and setting and winning stopped. It started up again, right after, but for a moment, there would be nothing but the joy of watching Aran hit.
Aran always made Osamu content with being a hitter, in the face of any of Atsumu’s taunting ‘just’s: there was no lack of skill, control, power in what he did. Aran didn’t have to command silence, he earned it. Osamu watched him, from middle school all the way to the Olympics. But the best part of all? Getting to hear all about it, straight from Aran.
Osamu hears that Aran is no longer on the National Team through an email. He has a longstanding alert set up for Aran’s name, as a joke, so he can laugh about the weird contexts people with minor claims to fame get themselves entangled in. But this one is a bad joke, and lands with a wet fish thud in Osamu’s inbox. It’s a surprise because it’s a surprise.
“I didn’t know,” Atsumu protests, leaning forward. It’s the week after the announcement. “None of us knew! He probably didn’t know until a couple of days ago.”
Osamu considers his brother severely: Tsumu’s brought an onigiri in with him from the front of the shop to the back office, and waves it, risking throwing a confetti of cooked rice over Osamu’s business guy desk, where he never gets to make food.
“That,” he says coldly, “means Aran had a couple of days to tell us. And he didn’t.”
“He was probably processing. You didn’t tell me right away when you decided to quit. He’s had a tough time, with the injury and the move.” Atsumu can’t pick one defence, so doesn’t. That he can find so many ways to forgive and explain Aran, when Osamu feels stuck in a gloopy sauce of irrational anger, only annoys him more.
Especially because he feels mad on Atsumu’s behalf: “He’s leaving you on your own.”
Atsumu makes an expression which is all disgust and incredulity. He doesn’t need to answer, just like he doesn’t need Aran to look out for him on teams he’s always made his own. “I’ll forget you said that,” he says sweetly, instead.
Osamu takes the out. “I wish he’d tell us how he’s doing,” he replies. “With all that stuff he’s dealing with.”
“You could ask him,” Atsumu suggests. It’s hard these days to tell when Atsumu’s actually showing off all the growing up he’s done in the last few years, and when he’s just trotting out his secret Kita impression.
“Yeah. I’d have to ask him.”
What Osamu can’t explicitly say, to either mature Atsumu or the ghost of Kita he might be immaturely conjuring, is that he doesn’t want to text Aran because he always has to text Aran: in the whirlwind of life in the last couple of years, Aran’s stopped messaging first. So, Osamu will claim whirlwind too, and not message either.
“You’re just mad you won’t be able to watch him more often,” Atsumu says. And that’s true too. Both Osamu’s friend and hero feel increasingly out of reach.
“Me too,” Atsumu agrees, although Osamu hasn’t replied. “But everyone’s gotta stop sometime, right?” He kicks his brother too hard in the shins. “And it usually works out. Sometimes they’re even still allowed to share a tiny portion of your epic birthday party. Speaking of which, I only came here to plan that. So let’s. Fireworks?”
On the balcony, it’s starting to rain. Just occasional spots, but Aran watches as Osamu, feeling a couple looks gloomily up. “This wasn’t in the forecast.” Then he looks at Aran. “I bet you still brought an umbrella though.”
“It’s important to be prepared,” Aran says, blushing in the darkless, because he did.
“Yeah. Do you remember my birthday when I made that cake, and it rained? At Inarizaki?” He waits for Aran to nod before carrying on. “And then afterwards, we were both there late – I’d been told to sweep up all the crumbs, and– Were you doing an equipment check or something?”
Aran shrugs. He doesn’t remember this part, not specifically, out of all the days of gym clean up and checking.
“Whatever you were doing, we were the last two left. Tsumu had skipped off. And I wanted to go charging out after him, and you wouldn’t let me. The rain was getting heavier and heavier and I only had that track jacket. And you said I had to wait it out. If I went then, I’d get soaked and end up with a cold. And that would screw up some stuff you wanted to practice with me next week, you said, once you realised that personal health alone wouldn’t stop me being reckless if it meant a scrap with Tsumu. I asked, what were you going to do about getting home? And you said, you had an umbrella, you could go anytime. But you’d wait with me. And you did. No rush.”
“I’d forgotten that,” Aran says, and only sort of remembers the doorway of the gym and beyond it, the school grounds abstracted by the fall of water into a grey autumn anyplace. Maybe he’s only imagining an image to go with Osamu’s description.
“I still think about it sometimes, when it rains. It always reminds me to slow down.”
“And to bring an umbrella?”
Osamu shakes his head, smiling. “Nah, not that. I’m screwed if this gets any heavier. Still, at least I talked Tsumu out of the fireworks – we’d have had to call them off.”
“Oh.” Aran likes fireworks. They make him feel childish and an easier laugher, a bit like the twins still do, when no one’s being weird or grown up and they flump comfortably back into their old patterns. “Fireworks would have been fitting, though. There’s lots to celebrate.”
“I know there’s two of us with birthdays, but two isn’t lots.”
“But Onigiri Miya is doing great. Expanding everywhere.”
“I guess.” As he replies, Osamu watches a spark of light arcing across the sky: it blinks, a plane; a faux wish wasted. The smile’s left his face.
“You’re not happy about that?”
“It’s not really what I wanted to do.”
“No. I get that,” Aran says, and does, although really he’s making an educated guess. “When I left school, I specifically didn’t want to supervise a bunch of kids forever. Turns out loving something so much you get really good at it is also kind of a curse.”
Abruptly, Osamu turns to Aran, asks: “How are you feeling about the national team?”
How is he feeling? “Sad. But I expected it.”
“I didn’t,” Osamu puts in, with unusually forceful positivity. He has some of the rushing, gleaming enthusiasm which Aran thinks of as an Atsumu thing; Osamu tends to appreciate more quietly.
It makes Aran smile, to find Osamu still surprising him, with this, after all this time. Osamu blushes now.
“Then you were being wilfully ignorant,” Aran answers. “It’s not all bad. Now I have a few more free weekends. I can fly in for stuff like this. So it’s different, but it’s not worse.”
“And you don’t regret anything?”
“Well. Not anymore than you do, I think. It was still great that it happened. That we played volleyball like we did. And I still get to do stuff I love.” He nods towards the kitchen door. “Do you?”
“Yeah. Sure, yes. I just. I don’t know. I wish I had more free time. Or even work time, to do the bits I like.”
“Then do that. You’re the leader. So boss someone else around. Hire a business manager,” Aran says, a stream of suggestions coming from nowhere, except the vague awareness that there are people around, at the club, who ensure his turmoil can stay largely volleyball-related. “Walk away a bit. Be like me. Then you could come visit Hyogo, and try the local food. I had this awesome soup recently, with yellowtail and radish and sake lees. It made me think of you.”
Good food always makes Aran think of Osamu, just like a perfect set makes him think of Atsumu. Not because he’s imagining them making it, but because he knows how much they’d appreciate it too.
“You should have told me about it,” Osamu says, with interest. “Sent me a picture. We had some yellowtail in the other week, I could have tried to some similar flavours. I’ll have to see if I can get some more.” He moves his hands, clearly trying to capture something, maybe to work out how to make broth solid.
“I’m sorry I didn’t,” Aran says, also sorry to be interrupting Osamu’s thoughts. He needs to say it though. Shinsuke’s always right. “I’ve been busy.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
This hangs in the air for a moment, and Aran considers that he’s not the only one to find silence easier, and yet only he’s let it chase him so far.
“Right. I’ll keep you updated on all my best lunches.” He takes a deep breath. “I’ve missed you.”
“You too.”
They smile at each other through the gloomy darkness. A couple more drops of rain fall, but there’s been no rush to get out of it.
“I guess, no time like the present.” Aran pats for his phone, pulls it from a pocket, opens the chat he shares with both Osamu and Atsumu. Ignores the fact it’s been silent for several weeks. Resumes with something new. Sends ‘Found him!’
Atsumu immediately replies with eight fireworks emojis.
“Right. It is genuinely raining, and still shouldn’t get sick,” Aran says, which makes Osamu smirk. So they go in, through the invisible door and the still yo-yoing lifts and the hopping coat room, and into the main restaurant where Atsumu spots them from the dancefloor and rushes over. Already little frothy with libations, he now overflows.
“I was so worried about you,” he says, grinning, and grabs them each round the neck with his arms, pulling them tightly into a hug.
“We’re fine,” says Osamu stiffly, trying to pull away, although he relaxes into it after Aran also reaches his arms round both brothers, and pats him on the back.
“I thought you’d gotten lost in one of those scary identical hotel corridors, or maybe you’d abandoned me for a better party, or, or,” Atsumu mumbles off about secret surprises and magic vanishing acts, making Osamu snort.
The forceful, thoughtless, group embrace reminds Aran of the celebrations they’d do in high school, at the end of long-fought matches, grabbing and clasping and jumping together, all half adrenaline and half joy, and nowhere to run with it except towards each other. The room is loud, the lights bright and fuzzy. But mostly, it doesn’t.
“Happy birthday,” he says.
Tonight was hardly a volleyball game, but he’s swaying slightly with his best friends, and really happy, all the same.