Chapter Text
It’s an alarm that wakes Shouyou up from his deep slumber, to which the teen responds with an arm blindly reaching out to grab his phone off the nightstand. He opens his one eye in order to see his screen, disabling the alarm before checking the time. He had roughly an hour and a half before he needed to be at his first class.
Shouyou emits a small sigh as he rolls onto his back, highly tempted to just burrow back underneath the duvet and risk an extra hour of sleep. If he had been back home in Miyagi, he probably would have done just that. Unfortunately, he was in a completely foreign country and he knew that allowing himself some leeway for the possibility of getting lost is a smart decision. This is what encourages Shouyou to roll out of bed, begrudgingly dragging his feet across the floor towards his bathroom, intent on getting into the shower so that he can wake himself up enough to start the day.
Once he’s out of the shower and fully dressed, the telltale ring of an incoming video call emits from his phone. A small smile tugs at the corners of his lips as he picks it up, thumb swiping across the screen to accept the call before holding the device up in front of him.
“Miss me already, Kenma?” There’s a teasing tone evident in his voice as his best friend’s face is projected on his screen, who simply snorts and rolls his eyes at Shouyou’s greeting.
“I’m just making sure you haven’t burned any houses down over there, dumbass,” Kenma muses, to which Shouyou responds with an offended noise. “Plus, I wanted to make sure you didn’t decide to sleep in on your first day at a new campus, in a completely foreign country when your fluency in English is as great as Lev trying to receive one of Ushijima’s spikes.”
“Hey, I don’t think I’m that tragic!” Shouyou cries out, lips furling into a pout as Kenma’s laughter rings through the speakers, the teen becoming decisively sulky about the comparison.
“Kidding. But seriously, knowing you and your amazing sense of direction, I was worried you wouldn’t be able to make it to your first class in one piece without getting lost around ten times.” Shouyou merely sighs at the truth of Kenma’s words as he grabs his duffel bag, slinging it over his shoulder whilst his free hand grabs his keys. “Fine, I won’t deny the likelihood of that, but no worries ‘bout me! I am walking out of the door as we speak!”
To prove his point, Shouyou made a whole show of opening the door and walking out, turning his camera to make sure that everything is properly captured as proof of evidence to his friend. “See! Hinata Shouyou is about to take on the world!”
Kenma laughs softly, shaking his head at the ginger’s antics, who positively beams at him. Truthfully, Kenma was worried that Shouyou would be having trouble adjusting to a new environment, fully prepared to see the teen in a more dejected mood. He thought that seeing a familiar face would help him calm down. Plus…
“I miss you, Shou.”
Shouyou pauses in the middle of the hallway, a bashful smile adorning his features as he leans against the wall, eyes taking in the pixelated version of his longtime friend’s face as he responds. “I miss you more, kitty.”
His heart aches as the words leave his lips. The both of them quiet for a long time as they allow a moment to gaze at each other, eyes speaking more volumes than words ever could. It’s the first time in years that they’ve been apart, and it’s proving to be a tough challenge on both of them. It was proving to be harder for Shouyou, who was so used to Kenma’s presence. Kenma, who was there for every volleyball match, who put up with Shouyou’s long rants about how pineapples do not belong on pizza, who held him tight when he sobbed his heart out after his mom had passed away. Kenma, who always made him feel grounded and okay, when it seemed like everything else was falling apart. Kenma, who for the past seven years of knowing each other, had been Shouyou’s absolute constant.
Kenma, who he had loved for nearly four years.
“You okay?” Kenma asks, his voice soft with a lace of concern, brows furrowed together as he gazes at Shouyou through the phone. Shouyou clears his throat, feigning a glance at his watch to mask the fact that he had spaced out while staring (admiring) at his best friend’s face. He missed him, okay.
“Yeah, I’m alright, no worries! Anyway, I think I need to go now, gotta grab breakfast and attempt to find where the fuck my first class is.” At the idea of his incoming suffering, Shouyou makes a face as he groans, the pout making its way back to his lips. “M’gonna have to let you miss me a little more, KenKen.”
At the nickname, Kenma makes a face of disgust as he shakes his head, flipping Shouyou off who was busy laughing his head off at his reaction. “Man, fuck off. Alright, you go on ahead. I’m gonna go sleep now.”
“Okay, okay. Good night, Kenma.
“Good morning, Shou.”
“God, how many stupid buildings does this place have,” Shouyou muttered to himself in annoyance. “How big is this place even? I swear it got bigger than the last time I took the campus tour. What the fuck.”
Shouyou reaches up to run his fingers through his hair, lifting his head in order to survey his surroundings. It had been roughly an hour since he got off the phone with Kenma in order to grab breakfast. He would love to say that everything is going very well but that would be a big fat lie because fuck it he had absolutely no idea where his class is supposed to be held.
Emitting a loud sigh, Shouyou clenched and unclenched his fist to relax himself – a technique that his captain from his former team back home taught him to relax his nerves during a game. He knew that he was about to lose it, highly stressed over the possibility that he was going to be late for his first class despite the fact that he had made steps in order to prevent that from happening at all.
Gnawing on his bottom lip, he really didn’t want to have to, but he supposes that he really should ask for help from one of the other students. Looking around, Shouyou searched for his (unlucky) victim. His gaze zeroes in on a guy with blond hair and black-rimmed glasses, a pair of white headphones resting around his neck. The guy is sitting on one of the benches along the pathway, engrossed in reading a book. A childish spark of jealousy flares up within Shouyou as he bitterly remarks that this dude is probably really tall judging from his legs and dammit why couldn’t I have been blessed with better genes in terms of height curse you genetics!!
“Just for that, I’m going to ask you, giant.” He murmurs to himself, straightening his posture up as he marches over, schooling his expression into the friendliest one he can as he reaches over to tap the dude’s shoulder. He’s about to open his mouth and speak when he realizes that-
Oh shit, I don’t speak English.
Flushing pink and sputtering unattractively, Shouyou wrings his hands together anxiously as he tries to figure out how the hell he was going to ask this guy now. Said guy is now looking at him with a very weird expression, brow quirked. Shouyou really wished that the ground can just swallow him up right now, so he decided to express his question in the best way possible.
“Uh, where?” He starts off in Japanese, before making a thinking face. He uses his arms to make out a huge rectangle, which was supposed to be a building. He then uses his hands to mimic a book, before he looks back at the other student–he decisively decides to call him Mister Giant in his head-who was simply watching him with an amused gaze. “Fuck, I probably look really stupid.”
Shouyou scratches his head, tongue darting out to wet his lips as he tries to remember what philosophy was in english. “Fish- Phee-…?” He trails off, realizing that he was probably nowhere near pronouncing what the word actually was in English.
Mister Giant stares at him for a bit longer and Shouyou is about to apologize and leave before he embarrasses himself any further when he does something that makes the teen want to sink into the ground underneath him.
“You know; you can just ask me whatever it is you’ve been trying to ask rather than act it out. This isn’t theater class, shortie.”
Did he just??
“Hah?! You speak Japanese!” Shouyou nearly yells effectively attracting the attention of bystanders which makes the other teen wince at the unwanted attention now directed towards the pair. His eyes are wide as he points an accusatory finger at Mister Giant, who simply smirks as he shuts his book and rises, bringing himself up to his full height which has the shorter of the two craning his neck to even look up at him.
“Well, I was born in Japan, so it just makes sense that I’m fluent, right?” He muses, eyes glittering with mischief as Shouyou struggles to put his thoughts together, wondering whether or not he wanted to run and hide forever or whoop this asshole’s butt for making him look like a fool.
“I- “
“Were you going to ask me something or are you just going to gawk there like an idiot? Because I have a class to get to.” Mister Giant interrupts him before he can say anything else, and at the mention of a class, he realizes that he’s about to be incredibly late for his if he doesn’t figure out where his lecture hall is.
“Fuck, do you happen to know where the philosophy classes are held? I think I’m supposed to go to lecture hall C...” He trails off, eyes wide as he glances at his watch to check the time.
“It’s inside the next building over, go in and make a right, there should be signs that can lead the way.” Mister Giant directs, tucking his book inside his bag before sliding on his headphones, turning to walk the opposite way before Shouyou could say anything else.
“T-Thanks but… hey, I didn’t get your name!” He called out, but his efforts fall on deaf ears. Frowning at the guy’s back, Shouyou decides that he has more urgent things to worry about if he doesn’t get his ass moving.
Luckily, he was always known for his speed.