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Sachiro has a dog and a bird and two cats with a pond of koi fish, all in that little cramped house he lives with his sister, aunt and a perpetually missing older brother. Sachiro named the animals he adopted as his own with strange words, sounds that a little kid would pick up and cradle as their own after hearing air passed through adults’ lips. Roron. Sakeru. Hame. Kodoku. He named the fishes - five then three then seven then none, churning until he looks out into the pond and sees nothing but ripples - after the colours Kourai mentioned in passing. Taking words, affixing them to objects, pretending that he understands the meaning where there are ripples to a pond and wet eyes underwater that ask him how many of them there are.
Kourai thinks - says thoughts aloud to this tall boy with the menagerie of animals and limbs like trailing ropes of fishing boats, dragging in the saltwater and broken flotsam from the ocean - that Sachiro is always going in circles and he ends up rooted in the same spot. That he is searching for something but he doesn’t know what and he is searching, searching, searching.
They sit together on the veranda of Sachiro’s home, the pet menagerie spilling over boy knees and growing legs, Hame the Dog napping, Kodoku the sparrow singing half a song with sounds and the other with frantic flapping, inconsolable and a pond of fish attempting to walk on land.
I don’t know how many of them there are, Sachiro would say to Kourai, and they look to the rippling water, clear and untouched, pebbles dirty and clean protruding from ground.
That’s stupid, Kourai would say, not to chastise - he speaks words for the sake of speaking. Even with Sachiro who moves in circles. You’re the only one who takes care of them.
Oba-san does too.
Does Hirugami-obasan know how many there are?
She said she doesn’t have time for that, Sachiro tells Kourai, a string of words clanging like seashells looped on a necklace. Toctoctoc. Hollowed out and sundried. Kourai should touch Sachiro, see if he too is hollowed out and baked in the sands and trodden by feet.
And you? He doesn’t reach out, doesn’t chase after the receding tide. The waters will rise again.
Sachiro smiles a smile of a passing breeze. No substance. Air like air.
Things like numbers don’t really matter to me, Kourai-kun.
The Hirugami clan had played volleyball ever since Kourai can remember. Sachiro’s brother plays volleyball, Sachiro’s mother played volleyball, his dad is a volleyball coach, his aunt used to play for the national team, his grandfather played, his father played - back and back until the trail becomes obscure, for it is the empirical truth that the Hirugamis play volleyball and that must become the truth of life for Sachiro.
Sachiro plays volleyball like a child idly collecting flotsam washed onto shore, feet buried in hot sand, eyes tracing movements of darting birds, waiting, until he darts forward, propelling rope-like legs and arms to swat down spikes, to swoop in and seize the treasure he’s been prowling for. He is all idleness until he finds something that steals his fancy, a magpie to a shiny trinket, riveted like a baited fish to a fishing hook - he falls back onto ground, sometimes a volleyball court, sometimes the backyard of his family home, into the pond of the unknown swimming koi or perhaps even the sandy shores of a distant sea - he falls back, hooked in, sinking on a line.
Sachiro plays volleyball because his brother plays volleyball, his mother plays volleyball, his father plays volleyball, his grandfather played, his aunt played. He plays because his family has played the games since before he was five limbs and a too wandering head, before the bird and the cats and the dog and maybe the fishes. He plays because it is what should be, the next rung on the ladder, another door to another room. He cares because he wants to go faster, jump higher, block better, so that in a room somewhere down along the corridor of repeated blocking practice sessions, he can find out what exactly he is searching for.
Yurisei was one door - Kamomedai is now another. He opens doors, sprints through them, opens more doors - Sakeru, the Cat of Tearing, yowling beside and around him, discordant like a wind chime of pure seashells. Calcified bones do not make music that is meant to be enjoyed placidly - they sing of violence and being rent from the ocean. He throws more doors open and tear through them, the Cat of Tearing mournfully accompanying him, more spirit than cat now, as he runs amok in directions, frantically searching.
Kamomedai volleyball is the same as Yurisei volleyball - volleyball is volleyball, the game with the same dynamics, same mechanics, same rules, same Sachiro.
There is a split of thunder, lightning alighting the court - a net pole is torched, the bulbs blown out. There is a bark of command, thunder laced in its words. Sounds are no longer dormant - they charge alive, static and buzzing in the electrified air.
Kourai looks right at him, demanding that he follows along.
Kamomedai volleyball is the same as Yusei volleyball. However, Yurisei did not have Hoshiumi Kourai and somehow, today, that is a schism from one plane to the next.
Sachiro has a head full of muffled cotton - he thinks he is a koi fish after all, floating idly in that little pond, spinning in circle until there is a little whirlpool, shaking him from where he is rooted, bringing him to the surface. The whirlpool has a name, or perhaps a voice, for it sounds awfully like Kourai even as the cotton muffles away all thoughts and recognition for a friendly face. But Kourai’s face is clear. Kourai is as clear to his koi fish brain as the empirical truth that all Hirugamis must play volleyball. Slowly, very slowly, he thinks in the depth of where he spins in an endless whirlpool, slowly, he plays because Kourai plays and Kourai wants him rooted to the courts, rooted to a flying bird taking off to the clouds, slowly, Sachiro sees that this must be so.
Kourai looks at his bloodied knuckles, holding onto his sand-roughed fingers like they are but one person in two monstrous shapes, the blood on Sachiro’s hand his blood, and the trembling in Kourai’s shoulders his trembles, so that when the scrapes are covered up, Sachiro does not let go of Kourai’s tight hold on his skin. They share a space between these flesh and bones where entrances are not barred from each other, and he is allowed free rein to hold onto fleeing fingers and a bird that takes off at any moment’s notice, sailing far and away from him, a little koi spinning in endless whirlpools. So he will trap the bird with him, shackle it by his side and a game he naturalised as his and Kourai’s and theirs and play this game not because he must, but because he is Kourai’s and what he wants, the two of them must therefore heed.
Quit, Kourai bares him his teeth, their teeth. Sachiro is unafraid. Sachiro reaches, koi to surface, dog to land.
And leave you alone? Not possible.
Kourai makes the announcement, triumphantly and with thunder streaked through his wingspan, over their shared lunch on the roof. Sachiro is far away, stringed along with those passing clouds, chasing after shiny trinkets once again, but he heard his words, knows them not as sounds, listened, but did not respond immediately. Kourai’s temper is volatile and he snarls, Roron at his fiercest, Hassle the Dog, hassling its owner.
I’ve been recruited by a Division One V-League team. Tryouts are next month.
Sachiro still moves in circles, but nowadays it seems he had caught a glimpse of something in the distance, a treasure unheard to the eyes but clear to the heart, because he is in death pursuit and he had deserted Kourai behind, on shore, marooned onto land, an anchor casted unto sea yet all he can feel underfoot is sand, sand, sand, an entire endless beach of the stuff. Kourai called out to him, yet there is no answer, only an echo of his own voice, hollowed out like sundried shells.
No college for you then? Sachiro asks, words wearing the airs of a question but they can hear how it is a statement, something that simply is.
No college for me, Kourai says, a confirmation.
Sachiro stares at the ground, sprawling around and under their thighs and palms, at the sky, stretching above their heads, stares at him and sees courts stretched out from states to nations, chapped mouth curling into a terrible imitation of a smile.
Work hard, Kourai-kun, he tells Kourai, and he cuts his eyes to the clouds once again, ignoring the rift underfoot, as if they can exist in separate bodies, as if they can do this on their own, without each other. Crack, sizzle, pop goes the inert air to static sulphur, and Sachiro sits, an immovable object facing the unstoppable force that is Kourai.
You’re not coming with me? Kourai demands, wants and needs eating each other and spitting remnants back up, broken up crab shells and splintered exoskeletons on fractured beaches.
Sachiro does not entertain him, humming to the tune of whistling birds and sailing vessels, adrift at sea, away from Kourai and his anchored land.
Sachiro, Kourai frowns. Sachiro, he repeats, the sound something so familiar in his mouth, lodged between his teeth, that he cannot extract air from flesh, even if he goes on without speaking.
I’m going to vet school, Kourai-kun, Sachiro speaks to the clouds, to the ground, and then to him, words dulling sharp corners into an unfamiliar shape of a smile. He is adrift at sea and he had already set sail, riding the wind into a foreign port and he to another, soul split into two, unevenly spliced, so that wherever Kourai ends up digging up a foundation to grow his roots in, he will feel that acute missing part that Sachiro had whisked away to somewhere beyond the reach of his fingertips. A toss sent too high, just a little gap out of reach, out of range.
He wants to ask - to know - if Sachiro is certain that this is the path he ought to settle on, build a city and its walls around this decision. He wants to know the mechanics of that decision, how a ship can stray so far from shore and dragging its anchor through saltwater in wild abandon, setting out for a destination not determined by compass, telescope or the stars.
Most of all he wants to know if Sachiro is happy. Happier. Happier apart. Happier pursuing his goal of something other than volleyball. Happy enough to stop running in circles and head in a different direction than the starting line.
You sure? He grunts out instead, but rift and schism cannot sever soul from flesh and Sachiro carries Kourai in him at all time. He can read in the static air all the things Kourai had not given form to, reaching over to put his hand over Kourai, calluses on calluses, blood rushing from one vein to another, waves overlapping until there is only one ocean, a single piece of skin. There are no rifts, no broken chasms that cannot close and Kourai breathes in the charged air like it is the last time he can do that with Sachiro, fingers wading through the dark ocean, in search for kelp and vanishing light, stumbling in the rippling water, salt in his airways, in the breath he takes in.
It’s not as if I won’t come back to you, Sachiro jokes, smile sitting loose and uncertain on his mouth and Kourai sees the flickering click, travelling across distances, striking a chord in his chest. Three flashes of light. The hum of the ocean reverberating in his throat, his ribs, his fingertips.
You can’t ever get rid of me, he threatens, words a pretense to bring the both of them impossibly closer, so that the air too belongs to them, in and out, out and in. A tireless motion. I’ll play harder, play for two people. I’ll play for you too.
You’ve always suited volleyball much more than I do, Sachiro muses, mouth an amused curl, even as Kourai had stolen the breath out of his lungs and swallowed air that is rightfully his and theirs greedily into his lungs.
Don’t be a moron, Sachiro, he says, and tries turning his back away from all he’s known and all that is strange, conglomerating into one, as they part.
Hirugami Sachiro has an older brother who is the esteemed captain of the Swcheiden Adlers and a sister whose boyfriend annoys him to no end and pets that try to bury him when he returns home to visit his aunt and sister. Sachiro has an internship lined up after this trimester break and unbelievable back pains from attempting to carry all his books and laptop from the labs to his lecture hall. He has old and new calluses from playing volleyball to clumsily handling tools and nicking himself. He has a single grey hair from watching Kourai’s first internationally televised match in the student lounge during his first year.
Hirugami Sachiro has many things, but he had found a path that he had chosen for himself and he has always had Kourai, infallible, unstoppable Kourai returning to the outcrop of rocks standing lonesome on the face of a roaring sea, protruding from a cliff side.
How many koi fish are there, Kourai insisted on asking before he left for an oversea trip with the other rookies on Swcheiden Adlers, squinting mutinously into the harmless pond.
Sachiro’s known for a while. He just hasn’t realised.
Eleven, he pulled Kourai away from the water lest he wanted to turn up at the airport like a wet rat.
Ew, that’s Ushijima’s jersey, Kourai complained but deemed it no personal affront for the koi fish in Sachiro’s old home to house the number of fish that correlate to Ushijima’s jersey.
You’ll just have to steal it from him I guess, he shrugged, suggestive of something.
Hell yeah I would. Gonna reclaim my spot as soon as I can, Kourai nodded, very much pleased with the conversation. You sit tight yeah, I’ll come back to you as soon as I can.
Hirugami Sachiro has a family full of volleyball players and he himself had been a player, but the game does not belong to him and he had gracefully departed the court, to pursue a path that belongs to him and he as much to it.
Sachiro is still finding his path, but he found Kourai and Kourai him, so that has to count for something at least, the bird who returned to its nest and the koi fish who swims for shore.