Chapter Text
Halloween is for the dead, not the living. As are funerals. Both, a day of recognizing the very people who will never be present to see it.
Alive, that is. They will never be alive.
Hinata steps out of the gymnasium with his bike trailing right beside him, a cold rush of air greeting him. It is not entirely unpleasant, because three hours of volleyball practice is roughly equivalent to two buckets worth of sweat, but he’d forgotten a jacket. And that makes all the difference, really.
Oh, well. He hops onto the seat of his bicycle, the sweat on his palms fading when he grasps his handles, and he pedals onward. The beginning of a venture home.
Wind rushes past him the faster he goes, and the fields of sunsets and skies of tall, browning grass blurs into a whirl. The sort of beauty you can only find yourself marveling at in the countryside.
A black dot flies above him, a caw! escaping its mouth. He looks up to see its wings spreading apart, almost in a greeting.
“Hey!” he calls out, taking both hands off the handles to wave them wildly. The crow pays no mind for a good ten seconds, and he puts his hands down, pedalling harder against the cold. His mom is going to kill him when he gets home. Is it possible to get hypothermia like this? Or frostbite?
He pulls his thoughts back to a halt when he hears another caw! He looks up again, but the crow is gone. Instead, something smaller, but still an inky black, drifts further and further down from the sky. It’s hypnotizing how slowly it falls, and the way it catches itself in the wind that blows it left and right.
Finally, it lands. In his bike’s wicker basket, to be more precise.
“Huh.” Hinata leans forward and presses the brakes. It’s a crow’s feather. He reaches his hand down to pick it up, inspect it further in his grasp—
But he never gets the chance.
His fingers brush against the sharpness of the shaft, the quill surprisingly warm to touch, and time seems to stop and fast-forward all at once. It feels like his body is sucked in to a never-ending vacuum, breaking up into particles and then atoms and then electrons, like he is a jigsaw puzzle just waiting to fall apart.
Before he knows it, the sunset is gone. His bike is gone.
Time rewinds.
One moment, he stands in a gymnasium he doesn’t recognize, bright lights and cheers roaring in his ears, and the next, the sound of water trickling down a faucet, a yell directed at him, anger and adrenaline pumping through his body, and then, he is crying. The tears trace lines down his face, and he’s not sure whether it’s out of happiness or sadness, but he wipes them away with his jersey, the number 10 staring at him through his blurred vision. And then a hand touches his chin, tilting his head up, and all he sees is a number 9.
That doesn’t make sense. No one on his team has ever had the jersey number nine.
A thousand other places and moments flash by, every single one a different feeling that he’s never really felt before. There is only one thing that remains constant in each moment, though: a shadow. Darker and taller than his own. He’s not sure who it belongs to, but the presence is both comforting and unsettling, like when you see a stranger somewhere, and you know you’ve seen their face before, but you can’t quite put your finger on it.
Hinata doesn’t get the opportunity to contemplate it further, because time returns soon after; he is back on a road that goes nowhere. Right when he’s about get off his bike and make sure he’s not hallucinating, his bike rushes forward in a burst of speed, and it veers off, launching him into a cluster of thorny bushes.
“Ow,” he winces, attempting to untangle himself. He can feel all the burrs stuck in between his strands of hair. Crap. His mom really is going to kill him.
“What are you doing?”
"AAH!” Hinata yelps, scrambling back against a nearby tree trunk. Did he just hear a voice? He could have sworn someone said something. “I-Is anyone there?”
“I’m here,” the voice repeats quietly, and a silhouette pops up in front of him.
“AAH—wait,” Hinata cuts himself off mid-scream. “You’re…you.”
A boy stands in front of him, no longer reveling in the darkness. Even though Hinata stares up at him from the ground, he can tell the boy is taller (and it annoys him. It shouldn't, but it does. Volleyball logic appears in the most unnecessary situations).
Their hair is fully black, dark enough that it stands out against the sky, still the faintest shades of sunset, but his eyes. Hinata has seen them before, he knows he has; the stormy blue is all too familiar, except he stares into the boy’s eyes now and sees something that feels too heavy to be anything good. Sadness.
“Who are you?” Hinata asks, the weight of his question seeming to press down on him.
“You don't know?” the boy answers, and his expression grows harder. “Kageyama Tobio. Number nine, Karasuno.” There's a short pause as him and Hinata look at each other, neither daring to speak.
“No way,” Hinata finally says, voice small. “That—that’s my team, we don't even have a number nine, or-”
“And you’ve never wondered why?” Kageyama snaps, a gust of wind blowing his black bangs apart. He breathes in shakily. “You still don't remember me?”
Hinata shakes his head. “I know I’ve seen you before, I just can't remember when…”
“I’m your setter,” Kageyama says, and it comes out of his mouth slowly, like it pains him to say it. “With your speed, and my tosses, we were invincible. We could have been invincible, I mean.”
“Could have?” Hinata repeats, getting back on his feet. His shirt is still littered with burrs and thorns. He feels like a pincushion. “What do you mean could have? I don't remember anything you're talking about, and you can't be my setter, I already have one!”
“You answered your own question,” Kageyama shoots back. “You don't remember anything because it was everything we could have been. It happened, but not...here.”
“Do you know what day it is?” he continues, and doesn't wait for Hinata to respond. “October 31st. My day of passing.”
"What's that supposed to be?”
“Don’t you get it, you—” Kageyama bites off the rest of what he was going to say. For some reason, Hinata strongly suspects that it was dumbass. “I’m dead. In a different timeline, you were my teammate, my rival, and now we’re nothing because I’m fucking dead. Every Halloween, the dead cross over to the living world for one day. Dumbass.”
“I still don't get it,” Hinata says with a frown. “Are you sure this isn't a dream or
something?” He pinches himself. “Okay, scratch that.”
“Let me show you,” Kageyama sighs. He steps closer until they’re about an arms length apart. “Here.” He extends his hands, holding out a crow’s feather. “Touch it.”
“Oh, no, not that again-”
“Just do it!”
Hinata relents, and reaches for it. His fingers wrap around the soft plumage, and then—
Time rewinds.
It feels less destructive and strange the second time around, but still not particularly pleasant. After a few seconds of what feels like endless spinning and spinning and puzzle pieces falling apart, it stops. He stands next to a water fountain and the door of a boys’ bathroom.
He knows this place. His first tournament. He knows, he knows, he knows, and every second of it is still as fresh as yesterday in his memory.
The name Kageyama Tobio seems more familiar now.