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"People who love you will tell you their lives. This someone tells you, for the rest of your life."
— Yanyi, The Year of Blue Water
—
Yeah, so, they didn’t win nationals. A lot of stuff happens before that, and a lot of stuff happens after that, but somewhere in there, for one brief moment, Sawamura Daichi stood on the orange court. He told his teammates that they were going and they did. He crossed his arms in the small gym at Karasuno and gave Suga and Tanaka a face set in stone. Once he’s at nationals, he digs and bumps and receives like his legs are made of concrete; he is there and he is staying.
A first touch to give room to breathe. Daichi becomes a tree, becomes the Earth. He lays the foundation and sticks his roots in so deep that he manages to convince everyone— himself included— that he will reside there for the rest of his life.
Deforestation is still a very real problem, though; nothing is permanent, least of all himself. If Daichi is a tree then Kamomedai is the whole forest, every root longer and wider and stronger than he could ever have dreamed. He tries his best to blend into the foliage, but at the end of the day they are still crows, feet already tired of the ground. Hinata is swept away with the beeping of a thermometer, Tsukishima falls from the sky, and the ball lands out of bounds. The whistle blows— twenty three to twenty five— and then he’s laying back on the floor looking up, up, up. There’s no earth, no grass, no moss, no weeds; just him, sweaty and exhausted. Remember this, he thinks. Remember the lights. Remember the sweat. Remember: You were here. For a moment, he blinks at the ceiling above him, and then rises to his feet one leg at a time. Finally out of the in-game trance, the world shifts beneath him precariously; he is no longer a plant, just an 18-year-old with a sore heart, sore limbs. There’s Asahi, there’s Kiyoko, and then there’s Suga. They turn to the court, spines lowering slowly, a miracle they can bend after all of their mountainous triumph.
If a tree falls in a forest and everyone is around to see it, then there’s no question. The tree fell.
—
For Suga, looking back on nationals sometimes feels like it was one big blur. It was their dream, and then their reality, and then it just wasn’t. Now, when he thinks nationals, many thoughts occur at once: Daichi standing at the entrance to the Karasuno gymnasium; #1, Maruyama; #4, Teradomari; We’re having ginger fried pork tonight; Asahi hanging in the air like a beautiful portrait and a loaded bazooka all at once; Kageyama’s indomitable face, frozen like a marble sculpture while lifting the ball to serve, and Hinata falling, falling, falling.
I know what I have to do.
Kamomedai, 25; Karasuno, 23.
What were they thinking, really? They were thinking there’s still a chance. One more point. Nice serve. Another. Another. Anything which comes after this is a shock, a revelation. After nationals. After nationals.
After nationals, there's the balcony, and their shoulders pressed tight, and laughter that stays warm in the air a moment before it dissipates. There’s food. There’s Hinata’s watery eyes peering out from the darkness of his room as they all smile in at him. There’s the rest of their lives, but before that there’s the sleepy and subdued bus ride home.
(Suga, in between naps, opens his eyes just a bit to peer down at their thighs, his ear on Daichi’s shoulder. His mind is in that wonderful static state that it takes on right after waking up, like a TV set to no known channel. There’s the soft light coming through the window, the wrinkles in their track suits, the backs of Daichi’s knuckles, the pale contrast of his nails on tan hands. Suga shifts in his seat, then closes his eyes again. He does not lift his head to look at the face beside his.)
—
After nationals, after nationals: Time narrows down into exams, into the last volleyball practice, into the broad unknown of the future and the not-so-far-off past. Into a whisper. The number of papers on Suga's desk grows and shrinks dramatically like an ocean's waves, spill out of his locker and backpack and trashcan. The bruises on his arms and legs from practice begin to heal. Daichi doesn't talk much, as always— he is still trying to find the next point on the horizon to focus on— and Suga tries his best to be an orderly person, tries not to waste what he’s been given. How do you tell someone just as small as you that their life is larger than your grandest conjurations?
He asks Asahi about it, one day. They’re sitting in Suga’s room at sunset: Asahi is all long limbs, body shuffled and reshuffled again to awkwardly rest upon the floor next to his bed. Suga is perched at his desk, chair turned away from his piles of papers, feet swinging and brushing the floor idly. Out loud, it's a smaller question than it seemed, comes plainly: "What about Noya?"
Asahi smiles, and for once it is clear he’s not nervous. Asahi has been many things. Right now, he is in Suga’s bedroom. He is in his final year of high school. He’s still the ace of Karasuno, but that’s nothing, that’s temporary. Suga remembers him hovering over the court, a deity in front of the net; He’s hanging there. This is Azumane Asahi, as is: A nervous god— and sometimes a reluctant Jesus, when the holidays come around— assembled as a young man on the floor of Suga’s bedroom. He might not actually be an almighty being, but it seems he feels pretty good despite that.
"Yuu," he says, "has always had different plans from mine. It’s kind of like… well, we’re not gonna stop texting, and everything…" His large hands curl in the air, not grasping, but framing something which Suga can’t see. "It’ll be weird, of course," he adds, "but the only difference will be distance."
All of them are still slowly figuring out where they will put their feet next, but for once Asahi seems to be a bit more at ease than his peers. Suga thinks of the look on Nishinoya’s face when he refused to come back to the club without Asahi. He thinks of the broom, broken, and the broom, fixed. He thinks of Daichi, humming under his breath, hands in his pockets like he’s holding something special in them that’s just for him. Gentle fingers, rough palms. A call for the right. Asahi doesn’t say anything else, but he peers up at Suga on his spinny chair, whose swinging feet have gone still.
“I see,” Suga says, and he does.
—
There are some emotions they cannot find the words for. What no one talks about is how the first few days after nationals are a bit wavy and unreal, something that slips through the fingers when they try to grasp it. Going back to school feels like emerging from a strong wave, rising slowly from the sea and breathing a different type of air for the first time in months. Practices are still happening, the clock is still ticking, Hinata and Kageyama (after a brief moment of silence) are still yelling. Their bodies sit in class but their fingers twitch, their toes flex, their minds stay in Tokyo for just that little bit longer. Together, they slowly fumble their way back to this memory of life before: Notes passed in class, smiles exchanged over shoulders. Maybe one day Suga will forget how his signals felt when he folded a finger to convey the next attack, but today is not that day. Tomorrow isn’t either.
I wanted to go further with this team, Kageyama had said. Suga cries, and then files the words away between the gaps in his ribcage. I wanted to go further, he remembers. I want to go further. He will remember nationals. He will remember Tsukishima quietly admitting his hunger for improvement, will remember Yamaguchi next to him on the sidelines, feet in the out box but fists clenched, torso leaning towards the court. Will remember Ennoshita yelling, widening his stance to receive a serve. Remember Tanaka and Noya, fists in the air, smiles full of wild teeth. Remember how Narita looked, lifting for a spike. Remember Hinata and Kageyama like a three legged monster, pushing and shoving no matter where they go. Remember Kinoshita, imagining his millionth service ace of the day. Imagining an infinity and then some, but before that the next point, the next point, the next point. Suga cries, and then starts over once more.
Daichi has not forgotten: Kageyama will go further. They will all go further. But before they can attempt to do so together, Daichi is smiling, is remembering his first year, remembering those who’ve prepared. Daichi is turning his back and walking out of the gym one last time. Graduation descends upon them with the sound of flapping wings, feathers detaching from the ruff. Daichi is leaving. Daichi is saying, once again, thank you.
(He is kissing Suga behind the school, but is less sure on when this happens. Time turns to syrup when Suga holds his face in his hands; it is both sticky and inseparable, each drop feeding into the next. Clocks melt off the walls. Watches fall from wrists. Suga is guiding his thighs apart with a gentle knee, tongue hot. What the fuck is a minute. Maybe he had to be home half an hour ago, and maybe that mattered at some point, but he wouldn’t have been half an hour late then. Either way, Suga.)
—
He stays over at Daichi’s one last time two weeks before they graduate. It’s strange, to know a home so well when it isn’t really yours. He’s not thinking of it at the moment, but in the recesses of his mind he is aware of the beat-up planner in the first desk drawer on the right. He’s familiar with the little beeping noises the alarm on the desk makes when Daichi forgets to turn it off on weekends. He’s fallen off the bed— so full of laughter it’s like a head cold— more times than he bothers to count; has felt the floor too hard, too often.
It’s only been three years, but it’s strange to think that he used to wake up into a life without a Sawamura Daichi, that he once went about his day without the voice he now knows so well, the night sky with all the right stars.
But what does a year mean, anyways? Why only? To what does it constitute? All that life lived beforehand added up to something, but it has melded with who he is now, this Suga who knows one Sawamura Daichi. They’re sitting next to each other on Daichi’s bed when he says Suga’s name, the tone and tenor incredibly different but the urging the same, not unlike when they’re on the court. Daichi: a planted being. Daichi, steady, at his side with his roots in so deep there’s no way he hasn’t been there his entire life. Daichi, saying his name like a call to arms. A first touch to give room to breathe.
I’m passing the ball to you now. It’s yours. Do what you will.
They don’t roll out the guest futon that night. They’re laying face to face, Suga’s hands on Daichi’s chest like how one shuts cabinets in the kitchen when it’s past midnight but they still want something to eat. Quiet, quiet. No one stirs, but the hunger continues.
“So,” he says. “About graduation.” There’s more words that he could say, that maybe he will say, but this is where he starts. It’s the end of the school year and yet here they are, holding this little beginning between their hearts like maybe it’s possible that some things don’t have an end.
A seed. A bird. The wind, and the earth beneath it.
Daichi places his hands over the ones on his chest and holds firm.
—
The truth is, you don’t really remember all that much about high school graduation. For something painted as incredibly monumental, most of it feels like a word said into empty air, the receiving ears already turned away. Thank you, they say to their kouhai, the words a strange insert for so many starbursts of emotion. All those points racked up on the scoreboard, the hours spent in the gym, the total height they have jumped as a collective, every centimeter added together; does it amount to this? Does it ever stop?
This isn’t the end of anything, Takeda had said. On the walk back home, Daichi alternates between looking at his feet and the sky, finding that high school has already begun to fade like petals peeling off from a tree after the peak of spring. At his side, Suga does not say much but gleams steady in the afternoon light, moving constant, a river that stretches on. Breathes, as though he doesn't carve his way through Daichi's being like he's predestined. Like eons of a process that feels furthest from erosion.
At the fork in the road, they stop. There’s no goodbyes, but a promise, something without pinkies wrapped around it but just as solid, maybe more so. It lingers in the space between them, even as they part ways; I’m gonna ask you what you had for dinner. I’m gonna ask you how you slept. I’m gonna see you later.
I love you.
Takeda had said for the rest of your lives. Maybe, maybe, Suga thinks. Just maybe, the rest of our lives.
—
One afternoon, somewhere in the midst of it all: Graduation is just around the corner. Three days before, Asahi had sat on the floor of Suga’s room and Suga had asked him a question. Today, Suga is walking home with Daichi. For a moment in between, he sat in a different bedroom and heard his name said like a carrier pigeon, a letter on its way, a bird taking flight. After many more minutes of silence (and a few tears), Suga begins again. Is there any one way to operate, except to continuously hit refresh? Forget minutes, forget the points, forget winners or losers. He parts the curtains and finds life like a string of fairy lights, individual joys. His name, said again and again. Drips of cream spilling out the mouth.
Life after nationals. Life after Asahi and the spinny chair. You can do anything, Takeda had said. Suga would be afraid, but Daichi’s only ever made him feel like a lightning rod, the point of an arrow that will always find its mark. He’s stayed the night at Daichi’s countless times, and if there’s anything he’s learned about that house— Daichi in every corner, every orifice— it’s that there’s no room for doubt.
So, yeah; there’s gonna be some words exchanged. There’s gonna be Asahi, and Noya, and many kilometers of sea. There’s gonna be college, and classes, and graduation. There’s going to be the rest of their lives, but before that: Suga’s bedroom floor. A kiss behind the school. And now: The happy voice of Daichi rolling down the hill to him, as steady in tenor and tone as it’s always been.
Suga turns and smiles. He’s no longer on the court and yet he finds himself once again thinking; I know what I have to do.