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(There’s one person still alive that Tooru hates more than anything and his name is Ushijima Wakatoshi. He gets close to killing that cocky son of a bitch nearly a million times in high school alone.
So does Koushi.)
Wakatoshi thinks, if you were born with talent, then it’s your duty to nurture it.
It’s your responsibility to seek the best possible avenues to exercise it and to associate yourself with those best equipped to understand your abilities and help you further yourself so you may grow.
Oikawa Tooru is neglecting this duty.
He’s languishing in Seijoh, that much is clear.
Objectively speaking, Aoba Johsai is wonderful school for those above average middling types which, Wakatoshi suspects, is the reason why it’s so famous for its time-difference offensive style. Because they need that style, because they don’t have players powerful enough to blast a hole through an opponent’s defense without the need for creative strategies and diversions. A good enough volleyball school for players who are never going to be the best.
Because Seijoh doesn’t have the best possible team, the best possible equipment, not even the best possible coach.
Seijoh also doesn’t have the best possible ace.
The choice, supposedly, should have been clear.
Oikawa should have come to Shiratorizawa.
He doesn’t, which is admittedly very astounding.
What perplexes Wakatoshi even more is that Oikawa can’t seem to understand the error of his decision. Treats Wakatoshi like a pariah when he’s only concerned about the potential that’s going to waste because Oikawa is an excellent seed that deserves far more sustenance than the half-barren land Seijoh has to offer. He’s suffocating in there. He's getting choked by the weeds. He’s dying in the vine.
It’s obvious enough.
After all, if Oikawa was flourishing in Seijoh, then he would have already been able to defeat Wakatoshi.
It must be pride, he concludes.
Because he's never been able to defeat Wakatoshi and he wants to. That's a path that would no longer be open to him if he'd applied for the same school. Because he's too proud.
Perhaps he’s already long realized that he’s made the wrong choice and just didn’t want to admit it. Because he’s too proud.
They warn you: pride comes before a fall.
And fall Oikawa does.
Warnings are warnings for a reason.
Wakatoshi finds Oikawa after his defeat to a no-name school that used to have a reputation, wrapped in the arms of his backup setter, head bowed against the other’s shoulder.
“Oikawa.”
Oikawa straightens up from his position slowly, face already pinched with distaste. Wakatoshi eyes the other setter pointedly. He’s already expressed his intentions to speak with Oikawa, after all, but the other doesn’t excuse himself or make any move to extricate himself from Oikawa’s hold.
Oikawa just watches him in stony silence.
Very well.
“A word of advice,” he says. “Stay the course. You took a wrong turn. There was a place where you could have displayed more of your power yet you chose against it, all out of a worthless sense of pride.”
Oikawa sniffs, finally getting out of the embrace to move a few steps closer to Wakatoshi. “So I should have gone to Shiratorizawa and that would have made it okay?”
He still doesn’t understand, Wakatoshi sees. He thinks it’s just Wakatoshi’s self-confidence talking even if Wakatoshi is stating facts. He says he has never regretted his choice when he should have.
He meets Wakatoshi’s gaze and his eyes blaze with challenge that thrills and disappoints Wakatoshi in equal measure because it would have served him well if he had gone to Shiratorizawa.
“You’d best never forget my worthless pride.”
(“He should be thanking my pride. It’s the only goddamn reason why he’s still alive.”)
Wakatoshi lets him walk away, because you can’t talk sense to people who don’t want to listen.
“If I’m not being too forward, Ushijima-san, I think Tooru displays his power in Seijoh just fine.”
Wakatoshi’s gaze drift to where Oikawa’s backup setter is still lounging against the wall, face shadowed by the outline of a pillar. He wonders who this player is, to be so close to Oikawa as to merit the use of his first name, as to feel like he has the right to have opinions on his better’s talent.
“I apologize,” he tilts his head in acknowledgement. “I’ve neglected to acquaint myself with the names of Seijoh’s non-starting players.”
A slow smile creeps along what he could see of the other setter’s face. “That’s alright,” is his careless reply. “But you know, backup players have their roles to play on the team, too, Ushijima-san. Everyone has their place. Perhaps it will do you well to learn yours.”
It’s definitely the strangest conversation Wakatoshi’s ever been a part of.
An unfortunate accident – while waiting their turn to cross an intersection, Shirabu gets caught up in the bustle of the crowd and ends up stumbling onto the street right into the path of an incoming car.
He only breaks his wrist, thankfully.
Shiratorizawa’s backup setter is named Semi Eita.
But Wakatoshi already knew that.
(“What was that?” Tooru snaps. “What happened to being careful? You did that in broad daylight in the middle of a crowd, and people could have seen! You could have been caught, Kou-chan!”
“I wasn’t,” Koushi returns dismissively, climbing into Tooru’s lap, circling his legs around Tooru’s body and tightening them until they’re pressed together as close as they can get. He crosses his arms, “And anyway, he didn’t even seem the least bit shaken by it, that bastard. Is he completely unflappable?”
Koushi huffs, cutely, and Tooru laughs. He bops Koushi’s nose with a finger indulgently. “You don’t have to be angry at him on my behalf, Kou-chan.”
“I’m not.” Koushi’s face is thunderous. “I’ve told you, I’ll let you handle your rivalry with him as you like. But you don’t see the way he looks at you, Tooru. I do. Lusting after your talent, unable keep his filthy eyes away from your body, telling you should have gone to Shiratorizawa. Do you think I’ll allow it? Do you think I will watch these pests pant after you and think nothing of it?”
Tooru nips at Koushi’s raised chin, suppressing a smile. “You’re cute when you’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous,” Koushi intones, softly, slowly, bringing a hand up to trace Tooru’s face. The tension in his body slowly melts away as he tucks a stray strand of hair behind Tooru’s ear.
“I won’t ever be jealous,” he continues in the same low, languid tone, lips just a breath away from Tooru’s own. If Tooru straightens up, draws himself up from his relaxed slouch, they’d be kissing. Tooru's mouth goes dry just at the anticipation of it. Even so, he doesn’t move because Koushi is mesmerizing like this. Even in the moments when he doesn’t care to try, he captures Tooru’s attention so wholly, fills all his senses so completely – an unparalleled point of brilliant intensity amidst the dullness of the rest of Tooru’s life. “Because I will never have competition for you, Tooru. No one will ever get close enough to you to take your eyes away from me.
“I’ll see them dead long before that.”
Tooru pounces.
And really, no one can blame him for having no control over his impulses.
Koushi is far too tempting for him to even try.)
It’s his first day with his university team and Wakatoshi looks away from where he’s been observing the currently deserted gym to meet Oikawa Tooru’s shocked gaze.
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, before he draws himself up to his full height and spits, “No.”
Wakatoshi lets him stalk away again.
Tendou uses only one word to describe Oikawa when he’s feeling uncharitable, and perhaps he’s right.
Oikawa is a diva.
This is something that Wakatoshi will now get to experience firsthand on a daily basis.
He doesn’t feel triumphant, exactly, but Wakatoshi doesn’t have any other name for the feeling he gets at the knowledge that he and Oikawa will now stand on the same court the way it had always been meant to be.
(Tooru wants to kill Ushiwaka but doesn’t because that is not the stage on which Tooru wants to hand him his defeat.
Koushi has no such constraints.
To date, he has planned and dismissed perhaps more than a hundred different ways in which Ushiwaka could die, each more satisfying than the last. His personal favorite is gouging out Ushiwaka’s eyes. First one. Then the next if he’s still alive a few days later. It’s a long, torturous process. Koushi would have relished every single second of it.
He had lessons to teach, after all.
But Koushi has self-control.
He doesn’t give in so quickly to his impulses the way Tooru sometimes does.
Ushiwaka is easily the most prominent person he wants dead, and he only rises in popularity the older he gets. A volleyball idiot, through and through. There would have been so much scrutiny, if he were to ever die.
Maybe if Koushi really applied himself, he could have killed Ushiwaka and gotten away with it anyway.
But he doesn’t.
He has really intense angry sex with Tooru instead.
Not as vindicating, certainly, but infinitely far more pleasurable.)
Years in years into the future, Ushijima Wakatoshi – old and grey and a living legend of Japanese volleyball – will pass away in his sleep.
Peacefully.
Sports communities all over the world will mourn his loss.
They will say he was Japan’s number one miracle boy.
They don’t know just how right they all are.