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Your name is Osamu Miya. You are twenty-five years old. You are in love with your best friend.
The realisation doesn’t come with dramatics. There’s no oh, no fireworks, no jump in your chest. It isn’t sudden. Instead, it’s the kind of realisation you come to as you lay in your bed at night having spent all day thinking about a problem from every angle you could. Small and satisfying but the kind of thing you say you don’t need to write down or deal with now because you’ll remember in the morning… and then don’t.
So maybe you don’t remember every time you asked yourself if maybe you like him as more than a friend, but it has simmered in the back of your mind, slowly bubbling away. It’s a comforting presence, almost. A simple fact of life that goes with so many others.
Your name is Osamu Miya. You are twenty-five years old. You are in love with your best friend.
There was never a singular moment. Instead, your life is a series of moments, a patchwork of moments with him and without him, except even the moments where he wasn’t actually present, he’s always kind of been there. In your head. He might not have physically been there when you were up until 3am every night for a month straight ahead of opening the store, but he was, too. In the photo you keep as your phone background. The voice in the back of your mind telling you, “Just keep going, would you? How lame if you fuck it up now.”
He wasn’t there when you were a child, either, but you could almost pretend that he was. You’ve seen the pictures his mom keeps around her house. You’ve seen the ones tucked away in photo albums that were only meant for close family members.
You wonder what that meant, that you’d been shown.
Regardless, you’ve seen photos, and it’s all too easy to imagine an eight-year-old Rin getting involved in the shenanigans you used to get up to with your brother. Maybe you’d have bullied Atsumu together. You did enough of it at school, even under Kita’s watchful eye.
You can see the tell-tale signs of old friendship, even now. You can’t join them, and in some ways there’s a pang of disappointment as you watch on a screen as Tsumu and Rin square up with each other through a net. It’s not that you miss the sport so much as you miss the people, sometimes. You wouldn’t trade what you do now for anything—you’re enjoying the challenges that come with business ownership.
But sometimes, you miss the camaraderie that only comes with standing in a team with someone, your wins and losses all shared. It can be lonely, doing what you do. The days are long, and nights routinely leave you staring at financial documents, ready to tear your hair out. This was the lonelier path, you think, and sometimes you wish you had someone to lean on, though you won’t dare say that out loud.
There are ways to do that as an adult, you suppose. There is a reason your mother always called your father her partner-in-crime, and there’s a reason she has tried to teach you that they were a team taking on the world together.
But that, you think, isn’t feasible. So you support your friend as best as you can. You watch his games. You listen on the rare occasions he drunk dials in the middle of the night and talks nonsense, even though you have to get up as the sun rises to be ready for the day ahead. You do your best to be there for him, and he never says thank you, but you can see it in his eyes, in the way he always drops whatever he’s doing to text you back, in the way he does free promotional work for your shop without being asked.
You look up from behind your counter to the big screen showing the match. You can’t see the court, not from here, but you can see a live-action replay of your brother damn near taking a spike to the face and barely throwing his arms up in time. You can also watch the replay of your best friend smirking down at him.
You remember something similar happening back in school. At the time, you’d felt like you could have stayed there forever, seventeen and laughing in the gym until your sides hurt, surrounded by all your best friends (and Atsumu).
This time, it doesn’t draw a laugh the same way, but you do feel a wave of nostalgia, and above all else, a warm, reassuring feeling in your bones that some things never change.
Your name is Osamu Miya. You are older now, but you are in love with your best friend, and have been since high school.
The game comes to an end. It was close, and you missed the final rallies because you were cleaning, but from what you can tell, EJP have won. There’s no other explanation for Rin to have that look on his face when the camera pans over him, after all. You know the look of a job well done, and he’s wearing it like he does everything else: well.
You are methodical in your cleaning. It takes time. You do not let yourself get interrupted even as your phone buzzes.
And then buzzes again.
And then buzzes again, like it’s ringing.
You try to ignore it, and eventually just put your phone on silent. There is a kind of peace to be found in the process you’re following, and you intend on doing it right.
“You ever heard of answering your phone?”
You’d know that voice anywhere. You don’t to look to know who it is, and so you call back, without so much as even turning around, “Ya ever heard of not botherin’ a guy when he’s workin’?”
“Thought you might make an exception for your favourite person.”
All at once Rin is behind the counter—he’d never given a shit about whatever kind of vague boundaries you tried to set anyway. ‘Employees only’ behind the counter had quickly become ‘employees only, unless you’re the owner’s best friend’.
He hooks his chin over your shoulder, peering down at where you’re cleaning. “You gonna be much longer?”
“Dontcha have, like, a team thing to go to? Dinner or somethin’?”
“You don’t want to see me? Rude. I came all the way up here especially to see my best bro and this is how you treat me?”
You stop what you’re doing. You turn around to look at him.
His face is a lot closer than you expect it to be.
It would be so easy.
You don’t do anything you might regret later. You are well practiced in this particular art.
Instead, you roll your eyes, grab a bottle of disinfectant spray and push it into Rin’s hands. “Help me clean up and then we can hang, homie.”
Rin isn’t half bad at cleaning, as it happens. You used to try and make sure you got put on cleaning duty together after practices. You told yourself it was to have an extra half-hour away from Atsumu, and because Rin didn’t usually bitch about doing any of the chores. In retrospect, you think you just liked the extra thirty minutes of uninterrupted chatter and banter and alone time.
You jump when you hear his voice at your ear, pulling you out of reminiscing. “Hey. You’ve cleaned that spot three times.”
You try not to let your face flush. “Right,” You say. “Well. Can’t be too careful. Never know when there’s gonna be a surprise inspection.”
“Yeah yeah, whatever. You were daydreaming. Some girl?”
“As if.”
He’s behind you, and his hands are at the small of your back, pulling on the ties of your apron. You think he lingers longer than he has to, but he’s always been the kind of person to literally lay on top of you and hang off your shoulders.
Then his hands are at your neck, and he pulls the apron over your head. “Then what?” He asks.
You don’t answer immediately. He quirks an eyebrow. It’s another expression of his that you’re all too familiar with, like he knows you’re about to lie to him.
“Just thinkin’ about the past.”
“Very specific.” He hangs your apron on the hook of the door to the stand—you’ve long since upgraded from a pop-up stand in the venue to one of the more permanent fixtures, with an actual mini on-site kitchen and a shutter and everything. You’re convinced half the reason your stuff is so popular is because of Rin. You know it’s good, sure, but there’s nothing quite like a popular player hyping up one of the few in-stadium food outlets.
How are you supposed to repay him? He’d loaned you some of the capital to get started. He hypes you up every chance he gets. He’s always had your back.
He catches you off guard, again, asking you yet another question as you close the shutter. “You gonna tell me what you’re actually thinking about?”
“You.” The word is out before you can stop it.
It’s the truth, though, and you don’t really feel particularly bad about saying it. It was inevitable. It would have come out eventually. You can’t hold a secret like that forever.
The shutter closes with a clunk and echoes in the now nearly-empty and dimmed concourse. You double check the lock. Rin hasn’t said anything. You don’t think he’s even moved; he’s still standing there, watching you, with both his hands shoved into his pockets.
“Me,” He says, like he doesn’t quite believe it. “Sounds kinda gay, bro.”
You raise an eyebrow. You debate if it’s worth it, and eventually you shrug. “So what if it was?”
You might not have ever had an oh moment, but you get to watch and hear Rin’s.
“Oh.”
You study his face. You can’t read it, and that’s not something you’re used to.
But then, he walks back towards you, and his face is right there again, and he kisses you square on the mouth.
You might have a little oh moment of your own.
Your name is Osamu Miya. You are twenty-five years old. You are in love with your best friend, and you have been since high school.
You think he likes you back.