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It’s after school when he sees him walk out of the administration office, makes eye contact with him, and watches as Riko rushes to him, tears building in her eyes.
“I’m back.”
Aida Riko cries.
Kiyoshi Teppei comforts.
Hyuuga Junpei freezes.
It’s barely a minute, but it slowly flows through Hyuga’s mind like hot tar. Dragging through his conscience in a million agonizing frames-per-second slow-motion, sticky, dripping and scorching to the touch.
That’s right.
He’s back.
“I’ve got to get sensei’s signature,” Riko sniffles, wiping the back of her hand against her cheek, leaving to approach the teacher’s offices at the end of the hall. There’s a skip in her step as she walks away, pausing before the door.
With a quick whirl of her skirt, she pivots and looks back at them.
“Kiyoshi, be ready for practice tomorrow!” the coach commands.
The door slides right and left again. It’s shut.
Hyuuga’s mouth opens. “Did you have to hug her?”
It flies out automatically. No greeting. No inquiry about the knee.
He pauses, embarrassed and ready to apologize for—
Kiyoshi laughs.
His bellowing, unrestrained glee resonates through the hall shooting bolts of electricity into Hyuuga’s flesh -- a jolt rattling through his nerves, up and down his body, settling finally in the circuit between his brain and heart; a boomerang back and forth, picking up speed like a run-and-gun offense.
“Sorry, sorry—“ there’s a smile on his face, in his eyes, in his voice undoing any sort of apology in his words “—I didn’t know you’d get jealous like this, Hyuuga. Did you also want a hug?”
Same old Kiyoshi.
Hyuuga huffs out a laugh. A weak attempt at hiding his irritation, frustration, excitement, relief, and the yearning that gnaws at him late at night, reflections and ruminations on how things could’ve played out if -
snap-crack.
The memory is enough.
Enough to hit his dribbling pulse out-of-bounds.
He takes a deep breath, eyes closing for a moment.
Restart the play.
First-year fine-tuned their dynamic – the captain and could’ve-been-captain, the best not-friends, the impossible and the inevitable— and Hyuga remembers his part.
Denial returns naturally.
The door opens again and Riko returns to the duo, eyes still a little puffy.
“We’ll be playing with Mitobe for the rest of the year, Riko,” Hyuuga declares, already walking away.
The coach’s thin eyebrows fly up. “But, Tepp—“
“Iron idiot left his brain at the hospital,” Hyuuga drones, reaching up to massage his temples. “Iron Heart. What the hell?! His heart is barely worth a compliment.”