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“We’re so late,” Tobio huffs, holding tight to his bag as he sprints through the mall. Next to him, Hinata easily keeps up.
They come to a halt at an exit, looking around but unable find a single familiar face. Panicking, Tobio pulls out his phone, seeing the screen flash the time at him before shutting off.
“Fuck, I’m out of battery!” he says, tapping at it, but it’s no use. His phone’s definitely dead.
“Kageyamaaaa,” Hinata whines, “I told you not to use your phone when we were eating. Mine’s dead too, remember?”
“It’s not my fault you didn’t charge your phone last night!” he argues, before pocketing his phone. “Now we don’t have a way to call everyone.”
Hinata looks around with a blush. The look on his face does not comfort Tobio in the slightest.
“What now?”
“I think we’re at the wrong entrance,” Hinata admits. “I might’ve taken the wrong turn somewhere.”
“Dumbass! You got us lost now!” Tobio yells before smacking Hinata in the back of the head. The middle blocker growls, pouncing on him. Tobio screeches when Hinata pulls his hair.
They were supposed to meet with the rest of the team at the mall entrance so they could return to the hotel together, but somehow Tobio got stuck with his moron of a partner when everyone split for lunch. Now they have 1) missed the meeting time and 2) gotten lost in the mall.
When they finally stop fighting, Tobio’s rubbing his cheeks because Hinata had pinched them. He asks, “How many entrances even are there in this place?”
“I don’t know!” Hinata says, scratching his head. “I thought this was the entrance we’re supposed to meet at!”
“Obviously not, idiot, since no one’s here.”
“Shut up! Like you know anything.”
Tobio scans the shops nearby, remembering something. “Aren’t we supposed to be at the entrance next to a burger place or something?”
“Maji Burger!” Hinata gasps. “I think I know which entrance we’re supposed to go to!” He grabs Tobio’s wrist, beginning to sprint away with Tobio trailing behind.
“Slow down, dumbass!” he yells as he trips all over himself.
Hinata looks over his shoulder with a smirk. “You saying you can’t keep up?”
Tobio pulls his wrist from Hinata’s grasp to race ahead. Like hell that idiot’s going to beat him.
“Oi, Baka-yama, you’re not even going the right way!”
They eventually find the entrance with the Maji burger, but their team is nowhere in sight.
“Shit,” Tobio curses, “it’s because we’re late.”
Hinata whines. “Aw, I thought they would have waited for us!”
“They said to be on time, dumbass.”
“Still.”
They exit the mall, continuing to look around for any sign of Karasuno but finding no one. Tobio frowns, clutching his gym bag close.
“Kageyama!” Hinata calls. When Tobio looks over, he sees Hinata pointing at something behind a bench. “Look!”
Tobio walks over, brows furrowing when he sees what’s caught his partner’s attention:
A dog.
It’s small, basically a puppy, with incredibly fluffy black and white fur and an adorably cute face. It wears a black and white jersey with a giant SEIRIN emblazoned across the chest. It sits obedient and well mannered behind the bench, without a collar or a leash, staring up at them with giant blue eyes.
Hinata crouches down, handing reaching out to pet his head.
“Aw, so cute!” he coos when the puppy sniffs his hand, and Tobio immediately says, “Don’t touch it! What if it bites you?”
Hinata ignores him. “You’re not gonna bite me, are you?” he says in a sweet voice, and Tobio frowns. What the hell kind of tone is that anyway?
“Stop touching it!” he demands when Hinata continues to pet the thing. “We don’t know if it has fleas or something.”
The middle blocker scratches the puppy’s chin, baby-talking to it as he pointedly ignores Tobio.
“He doesn’t have fleas.”
Tobio jumps, completely startled by the voice that joins their conversation. He’s only less embarrassed because Hinata actually topples over from where he was squatting.
Next to them is a plain looking boy with blue hair, dressed in a black and white tracksuit. He has a drink in one hand and carries a gym bag with the other. He looks at Tobio first, then at Hinata. Something about his eyes remind Tobio of something, but he can’t tell what yet, mostly because when the hell did this guy even show up?!
“What are you doing?” the boy asks, and Tobio notices how flat his voice is.
“Just, uh, petting this dog,” Hinata finally answers. “Is he yours?”
“Yes,” the boy says. “That’s my dog.”
“Kuroko!” another voice calls out, and Tobio looks behind him to see a tall boy with dark red hair and wearing the same tracksuit walking over. Weirder than the fact that his eyebrows split at the end is that he’s haphazardly carrying about a dozen loose burgers in one arm.
“Kuroko!” the taller one calls once more. He gives Tobio and Hinata the once over, and Tobio scowls at him. “These guys giving you a hard time?”
“Kagami-kun,” the blue haired one (Kuroko?) says. “No, I was just wondering what they were doing with Nigou.”
“Nigou?” Hinata chirps. “Is that his name?”
“Yes. His name is Nigou Tetsuya.”
Hinata giggles, and Tobio rolls his eyes. “Why Nigou? Who’s Ichigou?”
Kuroko points at himself. “Me. I’m Kuroko Tetsuya. The First.”
Tobio and Hinata shoot him confused looks. “Huh?”
“It’s the eyes, dude,” the taller one (Kagami?) says, dropping down to sit on the bench with his legs spread wide. He takes a huge bite out of one of the burgers, and Tobio’s eyes widen at the fact that he just ate half the sandwich.
“Eyes...?” Hinata mutters. Curious, Tobio looks at the dog, then back to Kuroko, then back to the dog once more.
Their eyes are exactly the same.
“Woah!” Hinata squawks, petting Nigou again. “That’s awesome! How’d you get a dog that looked like you?”
Kuroko shrugs. “I didn’t. I found him behind a restaurant and we adopted him.”
“‘We’?” Tobio asks.
“F’he f’eam,” the taller one says, biting around another burger.
“Kagami-kun, it’s impolite to speak with your mouth full.”
Kagami rolls his eyes.
“What team?” Tobio presses. What if they’re from a volleyball team? They’re in tracksuits, after all. Maybe Tobio can check out their setter...
He takes a seat on the other end of the bench, trying to sit as far away as possible from Kagami, who’s apparently trying to using his mouth as a vacuum to eat everything. Hinata continues to play with Nigou, petting his face and scratching his ears. Kuroko seems unbothered by everything and begins to sip on his drink.
“Basketball team,” Kagami says. After he burps, he mutters, “‘scuse me.”
Tobio deflates, lips pursed. Basketball, pfft.
“Ooh,” Hinata hums. “It’s so cool that you get to have your own team pet!”
“Yes,” Kuroko says, smiling softly. It’s the first time Tobio’s seen any emotion from him aside from a blank stare. “Nigou’s the official team mascot.”
“So cool!” Hinata suddenly turns to him with bright eyes, and Tobio knows that face means trouble. “Hey, Kageyama, what if we got a pet mascot for the volleyball team?”
“Idiot,” he immediately says, “who’s gonna take care of it?”
Hinata shrugs. “Iunno, maybe the managers or sensei.”
“We have to look after Nigou,” Kuroko pitches in, taking another slurp of his drink. “The teacher advisor for our team has no responsibility, and we don’t have any managers, so we rotate who looks after Nigou. Even Coach.”
“See?” Tobio says. “We’d have to look after the thing, and I don’t have time for that. And neither do you!”
Hinata continues moan and complain. “You’re a spoil sport.”
“Shut up.”
“You are though.”
“I said shut up!”
“Hey, what were your names again?” Kagami asks, seemly indifferent to their bickering. Tobio assumes it’s because he’s so busy with his burgers that he could care less.
“Oh, I’m Hinata Shouyou!” the middle blocker says, smiling brightly at Kagami and Kuroko. Hinata’s always been the friendliest on the team, but Tobio’s witnessed too many times that it gets him into trouble.
With that in mind, Tobio’s much more wary, mumbling, “I’m Kageyama Tobio.”
“We’re first years, from Karasuno!”
“Karasuno?” Kagami repeats. “Never heard of that school.”
“We’re from Miyagi!” Hinata says, turning his attention back to Nigou. “We’re just visiting Tokyo because we have a practice match, but then we got lost –”
“You mean you got us lost,” Tobio mutters, glowering at him.
“– and separated from our team and that’s when we found Nigou.”
“Uh, shouldn’t you be trying to look for your teammates then?” Kagami asks.
“We would but our phones are out of battery. We couldn’t find anyone even though we’re supposed to meet them at Maji Burger,” Tobio replies.
“Do you want to use my phone?” Kuroko offers. “I don’t mind.”
“Ahh, yes please!” Hinata says, hopping to his feet. Kuroko digs into his pocket, pulling out a green flip phone that he passes to Hinata. “Thank you, Kuroko-san!”
“You can just call me Kuroko.”
“Thank you, Kuroko!”
Hinata begins to fiddle with the phone, babbling away once he finds someone who picks up. While he does, Kagami turns to Tobio to ask, “Do you play?”
“Play what?”
“Basketball.”
Tobio scoffs. “No. I play volleyball.”
Kagami hums. “I’ve never played. Ball is life.”
“You mean volleyball.”
“Nah, man, basketball.”
Tobio grunts, glaring away. There’s no point in arguing with a giant who inhales burgers like he does air. When Kagami stands up to toss away all his burger wrappers, Tobio takes in how tall he is, frowning at how it’s wasted on a sport like basketball. Kagami could make a pretty good middle blocker, he thinks.
“I talked to Suga-san!” Hinata announces, flipping Kuroko’s phone shut. “Captain and Takeda-sensei are on their way to pick us up!”
“Alright.”
Hinata passes the phone to Kuroko. “Thanks again for letting me use your phone! And for playing with Nigou!”
“It’s okay,” Kuroko replies, taking another sip. At the loud slurping noise that comes from the cup, it’s obvious he’s run out of whatever he was drinking. “Oh, I finished my shake.”
“Wanna get another one?” Kagami asks. “I could use another burger.”
He can eat even more? Tobio thinks. Hinata actually says something out loud though.
“Another burger?!” the middle blocker repeats. “Didn’t you eat, like, twenty just now?”
“Ten, actually,” Kagami clarifies, “but I can go for a few more.”
“I don’t know why you’re surprised,” Tobio says to Hinata. “You eat a lot too.”
“Hm, not as much as Noya-senpai or Daichi-san though.” Hinata considers something, tilting his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten ten burgers at once either.”
“If you’re thinking about doing that right now,” Tobio warns, “I’m going to punch you in the face. Suga-san told us to save our money and we had lunch already.”
Hinata glares at him but doesn’t argue.
“It’ll be my treat,” Kagami offers. “I’d be surprised if you could actually eat as much as me, lil’ dude.”
Hinata growls. “Oi! I’m not little!”
Kagami barks out a laugh. “You’re shorter than Kuroko, bro, you’re definitely little.” Tobio chuckles at that, but then Kagami says, “And I bet you can’t eat as much as me.”
“You’re on then, Kagami!”
“No, you’re not!” Tobio yells.
“Kagami-kun, please stop challenging Hinata-san.”
Epilogue
Half an hour later, Daichi and Takeda make their way to Maji Burger to pick up Karasuno’s two idiot problem children. He can’t believe no one got a hold of neither Kageyama nor Hinata until Suga got a call from a random number. He hopes that they at least listened when Suga told them to stay at the burger joint.
He and sensei walk inside to find Kageyama yelling at Hinata, sitting in a booth with two boys he doesn’t know. Hinata is leaning back against his seat with his head pointed upwards, drool slipping from his lips. One of the boys Daichi doesn’t know (large, with red dark hair and weird eyebrows wearing a tracksuit) is in a similar position, rubbing his stomach while the other one (much smaller, with blue hair and equally blue eyes, also in the same tracksuit) admonishes him for apparently provoking Hinata.
“I told you not to do it, dumbass!”
“Kagami-kun, look what you’ve done: Hinata-san can’t move now.”
“Shut up, Kuroko, he’s the one that accepted the bet.”
Daichi doesn’t know what’s happened since he lost track of his teammates, but from what he’s gathering he’s going to make them regret ever accepting whatever petty bet Hinata just lost.
Takeda interrupts their bickering, and Daichi wonders how on earth he’s ever going to stop these two from getting into trouble.