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1.
Hinata comes into her life so bright and energetic and motivated that Yachi wonders what she’s been doing her whole life. He fills her with awe and bewilderment in the same breath that he uses to tell her how amazing she is. Her face is embarrassingly hot and Hinata keeps leaning over the table and she has to look away from him in the same way that you have to put down a block of chocolate, because it’s unhealthy to eat the whole thing at once, even if it’s delicious.
2.
“Hinata-kun is kind of overwhelming,” she admitted to Kiyoko on their way home.
Kiyoko grinned at her, said, “Yeah, I think a lot of people get that feeling.”
“It’s like he’s moving at a different speed to everything else,” Yachi pondered, then lit up, exclaimed, “Like The Flash!”
Kiyoko laughed at that – what a lovely sound, so much different to Yachi’s, which always sounded somehow off to her own ears – and said, “I see what you mean. He’s really doing his best in training. Hinata’s earnest like that.” She smiled then, like she was full of hidden wisdom, and Yachi definitely wished she could be as composed and wonderful as Kiyoko. “Straightforward, you know?”
Yachi remembers ‘Do you need a reason to not want to lose?’ and thinks that yes, Hinata might be straightforward, but that’s not the same as being simple, not even close.
3.
It’s scary to her, the idea of volleyball, and watching the club members throw themselves across the floor and listening to the smack of the ball against their limbs only deepens that. Even more than that, though, is the serious, determined faces they put on before they walk on to the court, be it a practice game or an official match. It’s almost like a magical girl transformation, seeing them go from ordinary school students that laugh and jibe and joke to warriors ready to take down their enemy at any cost.
It’s pretty much exactly like a magical girl transformation. Yachi’s never been like that before in her life, she doesn’t think; never had a cat tell her she was a legendary soldier, never had a chance to make herself into something more than plain and average.
Or at least that what she used to think, but she looks at Hinata’s small body, hears ‘thirty minutes through the mountains,’ watches him practice himself to exhaustion, and realises, no, this is reality; none of them ever had a cat tell them they were legendary soldiers, no one gave them amazing powers all of a sudden: they made it themselves, created their own strength, and she’d have to find a way to do that herself.
4.
At the training camp in Tokyo, she’s reading a shoujo manga that the manager of Ubugawa High School’s volleyball team had leant her while sitting on the porch outside their rooms, and is using it to alternatively wonder what it would be like if different members of the team would confess to her like the protagonist’s love interest currently was. Not because she thought that they ever would – it’s the opposite, she can’t imagine any of them taking notice of her when Kiyoko is around – but because it was really very amusing.
She’d just gotten onto Hinata – imagined the same expression he used when talking about his determination to win as he says, “Yachi-san, I like you!” and wow, she’s experiencing near-cardiac arrest because of Hinata Shouyou for the second time – when he appears before her, says, “Yachi-san?” and she might really be going into cardiac arrest what’s the emergency number again –
“A-a-aaah, Yachi-saaaaaan?” Hinata fretted, waving his hands back and forth in distress. It was probably all too right, though, considering that Yachi had slammed the manga shut faster than she had ever done anything in her life and scurried backwards, clutching her chest, face hot.
“Hi- Hinata-kun,” she said, voice higher strung than normal. “You sc-sc-scared me, hahaha!”
Distantly, she recognised that she sounded hysterical.
“I’m so sorry!” he half-shouted, clearly panicking. “I didn’t mean tooooo!”
“It’s – “ Deep breaths, Hitoka! You can do this! “It’s okay.” She gave a wobbly smile, said, “What were you going to say?”
“Oh, yeah!” Hinata seemed to return to himself, coughed into his fist a little, asked, “Are you coming to dinner?”
She thought that she’d probably go anywhere with him if he asked her to, blushed impossibly more, said, “Yes!”
5.
Back in Miyagi, it’s after practice and they’ve gone to the Sakanoshita shop for nikuman. Yachi had planned on going straight home, but Hinata had asked if she wanted to come with them.
“I’ve never had nikuman,” she said, staring into the middle distance and wondering what they were like and how bad for you they were; she’s always been a healthy eater.
“What?!” Hinata shouted. “Then it’s decided! I’ll buy you some nikuman!”
She weakly protested as he tugged her after him, no, it’s alright, really, but Hinata exclaimed, “Everyone deserves to have nikuman in their life!!” with the air of a politician making campaign promises, to which Tanaka and Nishinoya said, “Ou!!” enthusiastically, and she was pulled into his pace once again. She didn’t mind, though. It was wonderful, having Hinata look at her.
6.
She's sitting in her classroom, innocuously eating her lunch while chatting to one of her friends, when a boy on the other side of the room, at the door, calls out, “Yachi?”
Her friend pauses mid-story; Yachi looks over, yelps, “Yes?” a little too loudly because talking to people she’s not familiar with always makes her nervous.
“There’s a guy here who says he wants to talk to you,” her classmate says, pointing out the door.
“Oh~?” Yachi’s friend says teasingly, “when I wasn’t looking you went off and got popular, Hitoka-chan.”
Yachi can see wavy orange hair out the door, and stammers, “I-it’s probably about the volleyball club, you know,” and even if she knows that in her mind, it hurts a little to be in a situation that seems just like she’s just about to be confessed to when that’ll never happen.
She stood, smoothed her shirt down, smiled at Hinata once she was in the hallway.
“H- he – hi,” Hinata says, looking everywhere but at her, eyes darting around as if searching for an exit.
Yachi tips her head to the side. “Is something wrong?”
“No!” he shouted; “Eep?” Yachi squeaked. Hinata took a deep breath.
“Yachi-san,” he started, jerking his head up and staring straight into her eyes, the intensity of his determination as incredible as usual, “I like you!”
She stammered something that didn’t make sense, that didn’t even sound like anything close to words, and she hadn’t even begun to get her head around the situation when Hinata, clearly flustered but definitely a lot less embarrassed than her, said, “Please think about it!” bowed, and walked away.
The next lesson was maybe the first one that Yachi had ever not paid attention to. Why someone as good and strong and full of life as Hinata would like her escaped her completely. She didn’t think that she’d done anything special to warrant it, nor was she someone who stood out much, like Kiyoko, who was so gorgeous that she literally turned heads wherever she went.
Please think about it.
He was... serious, when he said that. That means he’ll be waiting for an answer, Yachi thought.
Please think about it. She didn’t really need to. She’d always known the answer.
7.
Yachi walked to practice after school with a growing sense of trepidation, her overactive imagination causing anxiety to pile up. What if it was some sort of practical joke? What if someone had put him up to it? What if he’d lost a bet and had no choice? What if he noticed that she had a crush on him and wanted to make fun of her? What if–?
Letting out a muffled, anguished scream, Yachi fisted her hands in her hair, hunched herself over where she stood and started shaking her head furiously. It was no good, thinking like that. Hinata was nice, too nice to be able to hurt someone like that intentionally. But still...
Yachi stamped her foot and shook her head again. Steeling her resolve, she kept going towards the gymnasium.
Inside, Hinata was arguing with Kageyama and Tsukishima about something or other, and Yachi stepped hesitantly closer and closer, her stomach pole-vaulting around inside her, pulse quickening.
“U-um,” she tried to interrupt, but it came out quiet and weak, going unheard. “Um!”
“Hah?” Tsukishima and Kageyama said, faces intimidating, and Yachi gave a little “Eep!” even though she was pretty much used to them.
“Can I talk to you for a moment?” she said nervously to Hinata, eyes on her shoes.
“Y-Yeah,” Hinata stammered back, and this was it, she was really going to do it.
They walked outside in fragile silence, and as she stood across from Hinata, Yachi had to ask, just to be sure, “Earlier, you weren’t... you weren’t joking, were you?”
“Huh?” Yachi looked up at hi, and Hinata was dead serious and a little confused. “Why would I joke about something like that?”
Yachi felt a little reassured by that, but it made the whole situation unavoidably real. She was really doing this.
“Th- Then I...” Yachi wished she had control over the capillaries in her face, wished she didn’t have to get all red and obviously embarrassed every time she talked to Hinata. “I also – like you – so – if you’d be happy with me–“
She’d been staring at some trash by her left shoe, so she hadn’t seen it coming when Hinata grabbed her hands and clasped them between the two of them.
“Do you mean it?!” he asked, a huge, stupidly happy grin on his face.
“I do!” Yachi said, putting as much affirmation into it as possible.
“Woo hoo!” Hinata yelled, let go of her hands and jumped high in the air. Yachi laughed shakily, happiness taking her over like water on a hot day.
“I did it!!” He held his hands up for high fives, and Yachi yelled, “So did I!!” and smacked her palms against his.
Nishinoya stuck his head out the gymnasium window, said, “Oi, what’re you yelling about?” and Tanaka joined him, peering around without a clue.
“He’s my boyfriend!” Yachi exclaimed happily while pointing at Hinata, happiness coming out of every pore in her body, at the same time that Hinata pointed at Yachi and said, “She’s my girlfriend!” wearing the same silly smile.
Their senpai stared at them for a few moments before Tanaka started laughing. “Wahaha, you’re perfect for each other!”
Nishinoya looked solemn, placed a hand gravely on Tanaka’s shoulder. “Ryuu, you ought to know what this means.”
“What?”
“We’ve fallen behind Shouyou.”
They carried on about ‘not losing to a first year’ for a while before Ennoshita said serenely, “But he already has a girlfriend, so it’s too late for that, isn’t it?”
And looking at Hinata, thinking my boyfriend, Yachi thought that she'd managed to level up in something, after all.