Chapter Text
Thin clouds trailed after Kageyama Tobio during his evening run, their escape from his mouth measured with every other step. He did not subscribe to common beliefs like staying indoors when the spring weather dipped. There was very little that managed to interfere with the fifteen-year-old’s self-imposed training regimen. Each draw of chilly air burned his nose but reminded him that the school year was almost upon him, and with it, his first trimester in high school. He faced the incoming change with both trepidation and eagerness which both stemmed from the same source: volleyball.
A new year meant a new team with stronger rivals and the chance to grow beyond former limits. He had always craved the opportunity to play; it was why he trained as hard as he did. A new year, however, also meant the chance that life would unfold as it had in middle school. His former volleyball career had ended prematurely on the bench, but there was no one to blame for it but himself. An injury would have been preferable to the reality, which was that his team hated him so much they'd chosen defeat over sharing the court with him. Thinking on it as he ran uphill brought a sting of shame to his eyes, so he pushed his pace until the pleasant burn in his legs redirected his focus. It was a new year and that was as far as he would allow himself to go. When finally he crested the little peak, his mind was clear again except for thoughts of his running pace, even if unease settled as a stiffness in his shoulders.
At the turning point in his run he stopped in a gentle valley where a small park with a children's playground was nestled just off the sidewalk. With a relieved sigh, he wiped the clammy sweat that made his black bangs stick to his forehead and stretched his calves against the miniature chin-up bars. The park was run down due to its tendency to flood during the rainy season but it meant it was often empty, which suited Tobio just fine. At a nearly even 5k from home, it often served as his halfway point in a run, but it doubled as his retreat when the quiet oppression of an empty house became too overwhelming. A short run with a volleyball in his sports bag and an hour or so of passing the ball quietly to himself did wonders for his mindset. He checked the time on his pace watch: barely 7:45pm, no reason to rush into the second half of his run. Not when there was nothing waiting for him at home. He ripped the top from an energy gel and continued to stretch twitching muscles as he meandered through the graveyard of a playground.
With only a few overhead lights to span the little park, the idea that it might appear haunted had never crossed his mind. In a matter of seconds, however, the notion took a sudden and stubborn root in Tobio's mind when a sharp rustle and low growl pierced the cool air. The boy, bent in half to stretch his hamstrings, froze, gel packet dangling from his lips and eyes wide. A heart rate he had proudly sustained throughout his run skyrocketed and warm legs turned to jelly.
He scarcely had time to hiss, “Move, damn it!” at his traitorous limbs when a figure crashed through the brush and into view with a low yelp. Tobio’s gaze flicked up at the sudden intrusion and the hot, jittery feeling that had overtaken his body turned into a clammy sweat when his eyes alighted on the source of the noise. He jerked upright with a strangled gasp, but before he could process what the hell he had just seen, the rush of blood after so long touching his toes cast his sight into darkness.
It wasn't as though he passed out. Tobio was aware of his legs crumbling beneath him and the cool rubber playscape ground meeting his knees. Dizziness, however, washed over him and he blinked furiously to clear the stars swimming across his lightening vision. There was the sound of quick, heavy steps approaching him from the darkness. Instinct reminded him of the danger he was in but his brain seemed unable to turn the instinct into action. It was too late, anyway, as a pair of blurry feet and legs came into view and the heat of strong hands pressed him gently to his back. Tobio’s eyes shot upward and in the same moment, terrified afresh, he squeezed them shut.
Above him, the figure he'd seen made a confused sort of noise, its voice questioning and concerned, and from his place on the ground, Tobio held his breath. Maybe, he thought, if he played dead, then whatever the hell that thing was would leave him alone. Instead the creature mumbled something else, tone clearly annoyed, and prodded Tobio in the side. He squeaked and leveled a hard glare at the creature by instinct before his face dropped in horror.
“Don’t kill me,” he pleaded.
Objectively human in form- two legs, two arms, one head - the stranger narrowed over sized eyes that looked pitch black in the already dim park light. A curtain of curly orange hair shrouded them from view of the sidewalk. It pressed two of three fingers- three, Tobio realized dimly- against the boy’s forehead causing him to flinch. The creature frowned with a mouth slightly too wide, scrunched a tiny button nose, then clambered onto Tobio’s chest. Air that was already difficult to come by exited his lungs in a rush: standing, that thing seemed no taller than Tobio’s shoulder, but it was heavier than it looked. Again, it pressed its fingers against the boy's face, but with nowhere to hide, Tobio's only choice was to squeeze his eyes shut again.
Instead of meeting an untimely death at the hands of an alien creature, Tobio felt the terror of the situation leave his stiff limbs like it was melting into the ground. Behind his shut eyes a series of images flitted in and out of view, things he had never seen before but knew intimately in an instant: a golden tree, a dark red sky, home; a series of alien faces, all family, friends. His chest constricted with a wave of fear and homesickness as the back of his eyes became the depth of space, the light of stars streaking by him, then, like being dunked in ice water, the images switched. These he knew because they were his. Tobio grit his teeth and watched the last several years of his life play forward at a nauseating speed until tears welled in his eyes. A surge of anger imparted the strength he needed to slap the hand away from his face and shout, “Stop!” He vaulted the alien off his chest and scrambled to unsteady feet, chest heaving and fists shaking. Fear forgotten, at least momentarily consumed by fury, he whirled on the smaller humanoid and shoved it, shouting, “What are you!”
Finally standing, the alien cocked its head and picked at the loose white jumpsuit that covered otherwise translucent red skin. It pursed its mouth, giving the impression that it was thinking before, hesitantly, it offered, “Sorry.”
Tobio knew the anger was still there, but it had been instantly eclipsed by astonishment. Asking about its nature was just an angry, rhetorical sort of question, not something to which he'd expected a real, comprehensible answer. “Did… you just talk?” he marveled.
To his increasing surprise, the alien shot him a glare that could have rivaled his own from earlier. “Obviously.” One of its three-fingered hands ruffled its own hair, then its irritation gave way as it slumped, shrinking even smaller than its already short stature. “Sorry for the Link,” it repeated, gesturing at Tobio’s face with fingers upheld. “I wouldn't have done it without asking, but I needed your language.”
Tobio squinted. The encompassing fear from moments earlier left his limbs trembling, but it no longer clouded his thoughts like it had before the alien creature had touched him. His own fingers brushed his forehead where the warm sensation lingered after the bizarre exchange. “It’s… fine,” he managed to mutter. Even his anger- much more familiar- had cooled in the moments since. He bounced once on the balls of his feet, staring at the alien, nodded, then began a stiff march back to the sidewalk.
“Wait!” the alien called at his retreating back. Tobio flinched at the noise that indicated he was not having some odd, running-induced hallucination, and peered over his shoulder. The creature was only a few paces behind him, looking down at feet that Tobio only then noticed also sported just three long digits. He averted his stare back to glossy black eyes when the alien questioned, “Can you take me to your shelter?”
Tobio barked out an incredulous laugh. “No way.”
“Why not? the alien frowned, crossing its arms over its skinny chest.
The look of incredulity on Tobio’s face deepened and he gestured at the length of the strange creature. “You’re… you’re an alien!" He almost stopped as the words hung in the air between them and solidified as reality. If there was any skill Tobio possessed, though, it was the ability to compartmentalize. The issue at hand was not the question of the existence of aliens, or the meaning of life or the insignificance of it compared to the vastness of space, or any other grand question that threatened to pull at Tobio's sanity if he considered it. He shoved those ideas into a box, and focused on the question, and the answer was simple. "There's absolutely no way. I can't help you."
The stranger mouthed the word “alien” a few times following the boy's curt response. Fidgeting with his two primary fingers, the creature reasoned, “I need a night cycle to make a suitable Earthen body. That’s where this is, right? Earth? Of the Helios system?”
Tobio floundered momentarily, his hands flexing wildly as he searched for words. “Yes?” he answered slowly, though he was fairly certain he'd never heard of the Helios system. Earth, though, yes. “What do you mean, 'make a body?'” The worried sweat was beginning to head on his forehead again. There was some kind of movie, right? he thought. Where aliens take over human bodies?
“I just need to redistribute some of my mass to match the form here,” the alien explained, his tone indicating that this should have been clear. “Maybe make a few small biological tweaks. Your star is so big and it hurts my eyes. Changing takes a bit of time, though." It offered Tobio a sharp-toothed grin when it noticed the bewilderment on the Earthling's face. "Are you so underdeveloped that you can’t do that? How do you survive without the ability to change your structure?”
There was little about the alien's sentiment that made sense to Tobio. His lack of understanding was compounded by the vague lightheadedness he felt at his brain's tenuous grasp on the idea of casually changing internal biological makeup like changing clothes. What he did grasp, however, was the tone: challenging, even a little condescending. “It’s weird that you can,” Tobio retorted. "No one would ever need to do that here!"
Apparently they shared the language of confrontation despite their differences. The two glared for a moment longer before the alien huffed, “It's just for one night cycle. You won't even know I'm there, so can I stay at your shelter, please ?”
“Sure, whatever!” the boy snapped with a toss of exasperated hands. The situation was already unbelievable; why not go ahead and have an alien over? “It’s not like my parents are home anyway! Can you, I don't know, run or fly or something? Walking is going to take too long.”
With a proud puff of its chest, the alien beamed. “Of course I can run! The gravity here is like nothing compared to home!” Tobio scoffed again but did not rise to the unspoken challenge this time. The magnitude of the situation lurked at the fringes of his conscious thought and he knew the moment he acknowledged it, panic would probably overwhelm him. No, he needed to keep his eyes ahead and focus on his run. 5k at a seven and a half minute pace. That would be ideal, though he'd settle for eight. He set his watch. Everything was normal and there was not an alien following him with light, bounding steps and an over sized smile.
“Oh, your shelter is so cute,” the alien cooed upon their arrival to the Kageyama house.
Tobio fixed him with a scowl that felt surprisingly normal despite the circumstances. “It's called a house and if you don’t like it you can go somewhere else,” he groused as he fiddled with the lock. “Just don’t touch anything. If you break something, I’ll kill you.” With practiced agility Tobio kicked his shoes off and locked the door behind his newly acquired extraterrestrial house guest, who seemed preoccupied murmuring the word "house" and running fingers along the walls. "Don't touch anything," Tobio repeated hotly.
The alien pouted at the reprimand. "I won't break anything," he assured.
"Yeah, right," the human muttered as he ushered the alien into the kitchen and ordered him to sit at the breakfast table. "I'm gonna make something to eat," he announced while pointedly avoiding eye contact. Even in the light, the creature's eyes were unsettling, though they were not black as they initially appeared, but a deep, dark brown. "Are you hungry? Wait, can you even eat the food here?" Tobio spared a glance at the alien and winced at the intensity of its inhuman stare.
But darkened eyes glowed at the prospect of food, their happy squint lending them a human softness. "Probably!" the alien chirped. "The atmosphere didn't kill me so we have to be compatible at least a little bit."
Tobio hummed his acknowledgement and pulled a second bowl from the cabinet. "It's just left over food from earlier. Probably not as fancy as whatever… alien stuff you normally have," he warned. With his parents away often for work, Tobio thought he was a decent cook as long as the recipe was simple. It was only leftover curry with warmed rice from lunch, but it was one of his favorites. With a certain degree of haughtiness, he prepared it, set the dish in front of the guest and dared him silently to complain.
The alien only smiled harder and gushed, "It's so pretty! Oh, and it smells good! This is food?" Tobio reached out in time to stop the creature from diving face first into the bowl.
"Use a spoon," he ordered as he offered the utensil. If his voice was brusque it was only to hide the feeling of pride that swelled in his chest. Human cuisine: 1, Alien: 0.
The alien grabbed the spoon greedily and, after a brief struggle grasping it with only two fingers and a thumb, spooned a mouthful. "You know, I was only going to eat it that way 'cause I figured that's how more primitive beings did it," he informed. "This is really good!"
"Ok, listen up you little shit," Tobio snapped through gritted teeth as he jabbed his own spoon in the alien's direction. "You can't insult the human race and praise them in the same breath. I don't care if you're from Mars or whatever. That's just shitty."
The creature expressed its righteous disbelief with a howl and wet spray of food across the table. "You just referred to me as… as waste! Who's waste now! I'm not sure if that's more or less insulting that saying I'm from anywhere in this rural system," it scoffed.
Tobio could feel the indignation rising as heat in his cheeks. "Get out of my house!" he demanded, fueled by the surge of patriotism for the entire human race he hadn't known he'd possessed.
Across the table, the little alien gaped, its red skin actually glowing now, a faint pink cast across the table. For an instant, Tobio remembered this was supposedly an advanced being from space. It was probably going to fry him with it's weird, three-fingered hand, or some kind of plasma gun pulled from a dimensional pocket in it's shiny, white jumpsuit. With a silent curse the boy braced himself again for inevitable death only again to be surprised when the creature dropped its head to the table and groaned.
"I'm the worst," it mumbled. "I just- no, you're right, I'm being terrible! You're the first human that I've been able to make contact with in three of your night cycles! And you gave me food! I was so hungry." It propped its chin on the table and peered up at Tobio with miserable eyes. "I owe you. I promise I won't make jokes at your system's expense again. Please don't make me go!"
The boy grimaced through a complex swirl of embarrassment at the alien's emotional prostration and empathy for being isolated and hungry. Tobio often felt isolated. And hungry. It was very relatable. He relaxed his stranglehold on his spoon, forced himself to take a bite to calm down, then acquiesced with a sigh. "Fine. I won't kick you out," he grumbled. "Sorry for getting all mad, or whatever."
Without its usual exuberance, the alien nodded and resumed eating in silence. Tobio did his best to keep his eyes trained on his food, but curiosity drew his eyes up every thirty seconds looking for satisfaction. "What's your name?" he blurted after several minutes of silence.
The alien frowned and chased the last few grains of rice around his bowl before he dropped his spoon with a clatter. "I don't think it's going to translate well," he admitted. In the same low voice from before he said something incomprehensible to Tobio, an expectant look upon his face. Tobio shrugged and the alien sighed. "The feeling doesn't come across, so it's not the same. Not unless there's a physical Link," he mused. To Tobio, who felt as confused as ever, the stranger said, "I guess the closest thing in your words would be, Blessed by Stars."
Tobio raised a brow. "That doesn't sound like a name."
"What's your name, then?" it responded, in kind.
"Kageyama Tobio."
The alien shrugged. "Doesn't sound like a name to me either. What does it mean?"
The boy thought about the characters to write his name, then flushed with self-consciousness. "Sh-shadowed mountain and flying- you know what? It's not important," he asserted with a brief stammer. "It's just the name my parents gave me. Is Blessed by Stars, like..." Tobio paused to think. "Is that a boy's name?" he asked bluntly.
In the same vein as before, the alien's skin brightened, a faint glow from within illuminating its body. "Of course!" he scoffed. "I told you it doesn't translate without a Link!" He twiddled his primary fingers behind his empty bowl and added an indignant, "Do I look female to you?"
"How the hell would I know?" Tobio replied. "I've never seen an alien before. Besides, your hair is kinda long, so that's a little girly."
Blessed by Stars reached a hand over his shoulders, as if suddenly reminded of the wavy mass of orange that cascaded down his back. In a voice low and listless, he said, "I've been traveling for a while. I forgot."
Tobio's curiosity was piqued, both for information about a journey through space and why the fact was so obviously troublesome. "Why are you here anyway?" he probed.
The response he received wasn't what Tobio expected: for a moment, the alien tensed, shoulders high and hands in fists. His dark gaze met Tobio's almost reluctantly, but a moment later seemed to widen in surprise. After that, he relaxed into a slouch and offered a cheery, "Guess it's like a vacation. Getting to see the different parts of the universe and all."
Even with humans, there were more times than not that Tobio had difficulty understanding nuanced nonverbal communication. He wasn't blind; it was clear something had crossed his guest's mind. The problem lay in the fact that Tobio couldn't fathom what it was or why it had happened. He seemed cheerful now, but for a moment, Blessed by Stars looked nervous. Tobio had half a mind to ask, then caught himself. What did it matter? He didn't want to become further involved than he currently was. With luck he would never see this creature again. Instead, Tobio finally offered a dismissive snort which seemed to relax the alien further. "Do you want more food?" he asked instead before he set out to cater to the little alien's enthusiastic affirmation.
Once Blessed by Stars had eaten his fill, he began asking Tobio a torrent of questions: Where on Earth were they? Were all Earthlings like the Japanese? How many humans were there? What's the human body made of? Once the interview had (quickly) reached topics for which Tobio had no answer, he huffed in annoyance and booted up his laptop. After navigating to the Wikipedia page for Composition of the Human Body and a brief demonstration of the computer’s functions, he ordered the alien to do his own research. When Tobio had finished picking up the house, switched a load of laundry, and exited the shower, his guest was still glued to the screen and clicking through pages with silent, unwavering focus. Tobio checked his watch as he slid it from his wrist: just past eleven. "I'm gonna turn the lights off," he warned, but the only acknowledgement he received was a grunt.
Once he slid into bed, he took stock of the alien's profile across the room. In the dark and with an electronic glow illuminating only his face, Tobio thought Blessed by Stars was passably human. "You're going to look different tomorrow, right?" Tobio prompted.
The alien turned and gave him a thumbs up. "I learned this signal shows agreement," he said with a grin. "I'll be human before you know it. Thank you for this information tool."
"Laptop."
"Ah, right. Can I keep this?"
"Absolutely not. It doesn't really do much without WiFi anyway."
Tobio could see the gears turning and the next moment, Blessed by Stars was back to poking at the keyboard. It was easy to forget, in the dark room, that the boy on the other side was an alien, but Tobio was grateful. It made his passage into sleep easy.
A knock on his bedroom door woke Tobio just before his alarm, and he rubbed his eyes sleepily when his mother called, "Tobio? I'm coming in."
He sat up and stretched. It was a surprise for her to be home early from her work trip. She pushed open the door and smiled at her son. She was still in her business attire, rumpled no doubt from time on a plane. "Good morning, Tobio. Would you like to-"
Then her eyes shifted away from Tobio to the right side of the room, her words dying in her mouth. And Tobio remembered, with abrupt panic, that he'd brought an alien home from the park.
"Mom-"
"Good morning!" rang the chipper voice of said alien.
Except.
Tobio gaped, not unlike his mother, as an energetic but utterly normal boy leapt to his feet. He was still short, but he looked more slender, less compact than before. Two feet with five toes each poked from the bottom of his white jumpsuit as did two hands and ten fingers from his sleeves. There was still a mop of orange hair but it was short, rising in unruly waves. Dark bags indicating a lack of sleep puffed under a set of amber eyes that, in Tobio's opinion, still seemed a little too large.
Tobio whipped his gaze back to his mother who met his gaze with a confused look. His mind was blank and he began to stammer nonsense when Blessed by Stars bowed and said, "Thanks for the hospitality, Tobio's lifegiver and mother! Tobio has saved me when I had nowhere to go and I think that reflects his upbringing."
The aforementioned boy could feel his face burning and he wasn't sure which of the awkward possibilities was its source: the bizarre manner of speaking, the exaggerated compliment, or the embarrassingly casual use of his first name. "I, I'm, he's a, uh, a f-f-friend! From school? From middle school," Tobio managed to sputter.
Tobio's mother looked genuinely shocked which added another layer to her son's crushing embarrassment. "It's… nice to meet you," she answered, looking back to the beaming alien. "What's your name?"
Blessed by Stars flashed him a reassuring smile which did little reassuring to the knot in Tobio's stomach. "I'm Shōyō. Hinata Shōyō," he informed with a proud smile. "And I'm Tobio's friend!"
Tobio covered his face in a silent plea to return to sleep.