Chapter Text
"Your sister's pretty great, isn't she?"
Tobio pauses for a moment, watching as Hinata saunters over to grab his bike. He glances backwards over his shoulder, at the window where Miwa liked to poke her head out of to watch the night go by on hot, summer nights. It was open, to let some of the cool air in.
He thought about his next words carefully.
"Yeah," he said. Then, and mostly so himself, "She is."
As a kid, and throughout most of his life, Tobio got angry a lot.
It must've run in his family, the anger. He remembered his parents shouting after dinner some nights, gesturing between him and Miwa, using them as key argument points. He remembered his sister screaming at their parents, crying about how they didn't care about her feelings and for them so just leave her alone. He remembered her crying in the kitchen one night about how they never treated her the way they treated Tobio.
Tobio had been angry for a long time, for various reasons. Mainly, he was angry as his grandfather for dying, as irrational as that was. But first, he was angry at Miwa for leaving, and then not looking back.
He didn't like being left behind.
He thought about the day Miwa had come home early, shocking both him and grandpa Kazuyo as she slammed the door shut.
Kazuyo blinked at her as she walked in. "You're back early." He commented. "I thought you'd be at practice."
"I quit." She answered, quite bluntly.
Both Tobio and his grandfather stared at her in surprise.
"Why?" Kazuyo asked. "I thought you loved playing volleyball."
Miwa shrugged, setting her bag down. "They wanted me to cut my hair short." She told him. "I didn't want to."
It seemed like such a simple reason. Tobio was young at the time, and he thought it seemed like a strange reason to quit volleyball.
Miwa walked away after that, going into the kitchen to find a snack before holing herself up in her room for the afternoon, leaving Tobio sitting, still confused, in the living room.
Sometimes, he just didn't understand his sister.
A few years passed, and then Miwa left for the first time.
Tobio hadn't known where the time had gone, but even in that time before she left, he could already feel her pulling away.
Many times, he'd raced upstairs to knock on her door.
"Grandpa Kazuyo is here," he'd tell her, half out of breath from running. "He wants to take us out to play volleyball."
Miwa glanced up at him briefly from her desk. "Huh?" She said, barely half-interested. "Oh, uh, yeah. Sorry, not today Tobio. I'll come next time. Promise."
Liar.
Next time never came, and now, here she was, standing on the train platform and hugging their parents goodbye.
"Stay in touch, ok?" Ten-year-old Tobio said to her when she lifted him up into a crushing embrace. Don't leave me here alone.
"I'll come and visit," she promised. But Tobio feared how little he could trust her to keep her word.
He spotted her through the window of the train once she'd boarded, and waved goodbye as the train pulled away. She was too far away for him to tell if she was even waving back.
Tobio tried to keep in touch with Miwa through email, but she rarely spared the time to respond.
She was always busy, sometimes not responding for days, even weeks. And when she did, it was always, Sorry! Been busy. I'll give you the details soon!
'Soon' never came.
Whenever she came home, she was always just stopping by. Like a break stop between her and the friends she really wanted to see. She never stopped to sit down and talk with Tobio anymore.
"Why don't you and Tobio go outside for a bit?" His mother tried asking her sometimes. "I'm sure your little brother would appreciate someone to pass with."
Tobio always looked to her hopefully in these moments, but she never seemed interested.
"Nah," she'd respond. "I'm only here for a bit." She never spared Tobio enough of a glance to notice the disappointment in his eyes.
Pretty soon, Tobio would start junior high. It was weird. Growing up, he always thought he would have Miwa there to walk him through life. He never considered that there'd come a day where she would just vanish.
The fact was final. Miwa had grown up, and now she had her own life.
But Tobio was changed now too. He didn't need Miwa anymore, he decided. He could be his own person.
It still didn't make him any less bitter.
Miwa came home for grandpa Kazuyo's funeral.
That was the one time Tobio remembered her coming home. As in, really coming home and staying.
The Kageyama household stayed together and mourned together that day. Even in death, Kazuyo was still holding them together.
It was hard afterwards. Miwa had left a long time ago, and now, Kazuyo was gone too. Tobio found himself alone. He hadn't considered that it was a possibility, and now he didn't know what to do.
Their parents must've talked to Miwa, he thought, after they'd tried and failed to get him to move on.
She'd text him occasionally.
Is everything ok at home?
How are Mom and Dad doing?
Are you still doing volleyball?
His anger built up over time, still bitter over his unprecedented isolation.
She'd stayed away for so long. Why did she suddenly care now?
Deep down, Tobio knew it was useless to stay petty, but it couldn't stop him from only leaving her with short, uninterested replies.
Yeah.
They're good.
Yep.
He yelled a lot more often. At his teammates, at his family, whoever was unfortunate enough to bump into him on a bad day. He never really meant it, though. But he didn't know how or when to say 'sorry' either.
He was consumed by his frustration, and it burned like a wildfire.
Weirdly enough, Miwa had started coming home more often now. Maybe it was because she was finished with her studies now, or maybe guilt started to catch up to her.
"Tobio, you've gotten so tall now!" She said one day, visiting home for the weekend.
"Yeah." He said shortly in response, unsure of how to properly respond.
It was like things had been damaged between them in the years Miwa had grown apart from him. And now she was back again, picking up the pieces and trying to bridge back over the chasm looming beneath.
Tobio waited for her, but he wasn't sure if he was ready to pick himself up to help.
And so, he shied away from her advances to ask about his life. He dodged her in the kitchen whenever she was sitting there, reading some fascinating new novel she had picked up in the big city. He kicked her out of his room when she stopped by to ask him a question.
In truth, he just didn't know how to take this. She couldn't just... come back now, as if no time had passed. Did she know how lonely it had been, leaving him by himself?
Tobio hadn't wanted very much from her, but he had at least wanted her to try, back then.
He failed, however, to see how hard she was trying now.
Something felt... different ever since Tobio had started attending Karasuno. He just didn't know what it was.
(In truth, he knew exactly what it was, or rather who it was. He just would never be ready to admit it to even himself.)
He stopped being angry. Well, somewhat. He still found himself snapping on the occasion, but it wasn't like the constant fire before that fueled him every second.
Mostly, he stopped being afraid. Fear wasn't something he had realized he'd held for so long. Maybe he just thought it was a part of the frustration. But in the last passing weeks, Tobio felt himself breathing freer than he had in the last three years.
"You seem happier." Miwa had said to him one night, helping him with house chores.
"Shut up," he'd said to her, but there wasn't any real bite in his response. Either way, she put the topic aside for the time being.
Miwa seemed to care deeply for whether Tobio was happy or not. She asked him questions each day when he came home from volleyball practice.
(Mostly about Hinata. Tobio tried to avoid thinking about that for too long.)
And Tobio... Tobio started to feel less inclined to walk away. He was no longer avoidant of her input into his life.
He wasn't sure why he was suddenly letting her walk closer. Maybe a part of him knew it was time to let things go.
Maybe a part of him knew they were starting to heal.
Tobio had, quite frankly, a lot on his mind.
He usually had a lot of thoughts in his mind, but not quite as scattered as the ones he had now.
If he thought too much about... it, he feared he might actually explode.
He's lying on his bed, tossing a volleyball to himself as he thinks, suffering all the while.
He thinks back to what Miwa had said to him earlier, and her knowing voice in such a casual, throwaway comment.
"It's that boy again, isn't it? That one on your volleyball team?"
His fingers slip against the ball, tossing it up weirdly, and it lands on his face.
He screams in frustration.
"You know you can talk to me about anything, right Tobio?"
Miwa said this to him about five times per visit now, an expectant look in her eyes.
He knew that she knew something. More than that, it was as if she knew that he knew that she knew something, and was waiting for him to let the cat out of the bag.
Tobio might've been afraid to say something. Like by saying it out loud, he'd be confirming it, leading him along the worst probable path that will likely leave him sad, pathetic, and alone at the end of the day.
He'd never handled rejection well, and he didn't like taking the leap of faith into something like this. Hinata made him feel secure but also fragile at the same time, like glass that would shatter with just a single touch.
And as if Hinata wasn't done with indirectly solving most of his problems already, he led Tobio to confront just one more.
It was weird that of all things, this was the reason that pushed Tobio to finally come to Miwa himself.
He hadn't realized it, but maybe this whole time, he really did want to forgive her. The only thing that ever stopped him was his own pride. But now, tossed aside, he found himself free to cross back over the gap.
He stood awkwardly at Miwa's door, which had been left open. The message was clear: Come in, I'm here to talk.
She sat at her desk, laptop open, seemingly working on something. She didn't see Tobio.
He cleared his throat. "Hey."
She looked up, surprise flashing in her eyes. "Hey." She sat up a bit straighter in her chair. "Need something?"
"Can you..." Tobio took a deep breath. "Cut my hair for me?"
Miwa had always been great at talking Tobio through his troubles. She was always pulling him back to solid ground, regardless of what irrational thinking he found himself looped in.
So, here he was, blurting out words he never thought he could ever admit to anyone to an almost equally flustered, slightly shocked Hinata. Tobio wasn't good with words. He stumbled, he stuttered, and he backtracked several, several times.
"You're an idiot," Hinata had said to him after he'd (finally) finished rambling, the brightest smile playing onto his face as he pulled Tobio down by the shoulder.
Tobio walked into the house after they'd said their goodbyes, breathless and face still warm. It burned an even brighter red once he turned his head and noticed Miwa staring at him as she stood beside an open window.
"You..." He started saying, on the verge of launching himself into yet another string of nonsensical rambling. Luckily, Miwa stopped him before he could start, putting up a hand for silence.
"Don't say anything." She said. "Just... I'm glad you guys figured it out."
She punched him lightly in the shoulder as she walked past, leaving him standing bewildered at door.
Tobio finally got home after walking Hinata back to his house. It was late, but Miwa was still up in the living room, sitting alone in the dark.
"You're back," she said, looking up.
Tobio frowned. "Yeah." He said slowly. "Were you... sitting here waiting this whole time?"
She shrugged.
Tobio rolled his eyes and dropped his stuff down, making his way to the stairs.
"Hey, Tobio?" She called after him.
He paused, one hand on the stairway railing. "What?"
She stared at him intensely. "That boy makes you happy." She told him. "Don't let yourself lose sight of him."
He blinked. It was true. He knew that. But hearing Miwa say it out loud felt as if she had put everything into a focused clarity.
"I won't."