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Among the ruins, Saeko finds herself self-conscious about the life she’s made for herself.
She had decided spontaneously to join Tanaka and his family on their trip to Europe, where they would spend a couple days in France and Austria before residing at Nishinoya’s apartment in Sicily.
“I’m hungry,” Suzu says. She’s nestled in Nishinoya’s arms, hands fisted in his shirt as she looks to Tanaka. “Daddy, can we get food soon?”
“Sure,” Tanaka says. He is wearing a peach colored shirt and jeans, a pair of sunglasses resting on his head. Just as he had feared in high school, as an adult he falls short of six feet; but he has retained his muscular build, no doubt a product of his prosperous personal trainer business which he’d put on pause for the summer.
“What are you hungry for, Suzu-chan?” says Nishinoya, adjusting her in his arms. Suzu considers the question for a moment, before she gasps in decision.
“Ice cream!” she says. “You’re gonna get some too, right Uncle Yuu?” She turns her head. Butterfly clips frame her face, fastened in her black hair. She offers Nishinoya a beautiful, uncomplicated smile.
“Sorry, Suzu, but I’m pretty full from lunch,” Nishinoya says, referring to the entire tray of lasagna and arancini he’d eaten earlier. “But you should go. Ryuu?” He passes Suzu to Tanaka, whose arms are already outstretched to receive her.
“I’m not tired anymore, Daddy!” Suzu protests, dangling her feet. They hit the side of Tanaka’s abdomen, too light to cause any pain. Tanaka groans before depositing her on the ground. She immediately grasps onto his hand.
“Hold onto Daddy’s hand tight,” Kiyoko reminds her in a soft voice, reaching a hand to tousle Suzu’s hair. She hums in agreement.
“What about you, Aunt Saeko?” Suzu demands.
Saeko smiles at her. “Nah. I’m not feeling dessert.”
“Kiyoko and I are gonna get some, then,” Tanaka replies. “You guys can stay here.”
“Great,” Saeko says, and watches as the three of them disappear into the distance. Suzu’s voice is loud and vibrant—a habit she’d adopted from Tanaka, one can assume—and Saeko finds herself still listening for it as she settles onto a table and drops her head into her hands.
The month had been rough. After eight years of blissful romance, she and Akiteru had decided to put a pause on their relationship. Nothing had happened—in fact, she had found herself more in love than she had been in years—but they worried about their increasing codependency, and decided it would be best to be independent for the time being as they rediscovered the joys and disappointments of single life. The succeeding days had been less a period of soul searching and more a period of expanding her music taste and devoting her time to her niece.
After committing to the idea of experiencing life as a full human being, Saeko found the actual pursuit—the countless hours at cafes, the abundance of time she had to practice her drums at home and read—was boring, essentially a trial in itself.
She wanted to be alone, but not unbearably so.
Nishinoya joins her at the table and closes his eyes.
After a decade and a half of boundless spirit, she isn’t surprised to find that he’d run out of steam. The change is barely noticeable, perhaps barely there. But there is a distinct sharpness to his face, borne out of discontentment.
Nishinoya groans loudly and butts his head into her shoulder.
“I’m tired,” he declares. She scoffs at him.
“Blame that on all the food you ate this afternoon,” she replies. “I mean. Jesus, Yuu.”
“I needed to impress Suzu,” he says in defense. “But, uh. Children are exhausting. Ryuu is such a good dad.”
Her heart swells as he says it. Pride warms her from the inside.
“He is,” Saeko confirms. Tanaka is nothing if not devoted; and, though Saeko had raised him by herself in high school, he managed to rise to the occasion of fatherhood in perfect form. She feels almost wistful reminiscing on his bouts of uncertainty before Suzu had been born, seeing it, from her higher perspective, as so many inane ramblings: caring for people comes easily to Tanaka, a part of him so habitual it has become muscle memory. She lifts her head to stare at the crumbling, sandy temples. The palaces of stone.
“I need a beer,” Saeko says, suddenly. Nishinoya’s head is still resting on her shoulder. No wonder he is tired; they’d been wandering the temples for hours. At some point Saeko had to wonder if they had been traveling in circles.
She had been wrong. A glance at the map had confirmed this. Though the temples seemed similar upon first glance, they’d indeed been heading north this entire time. None of what they passed would come again.
Waiting for Tanaka and the rest to return, Saeko once again has the feeling: the one she’s been plagued by for years. Sitting here, doing nothing besides waiting, she can’t help but feel as if she’s losing a little bit of life.
“Nishinoya,” she says, looking for some word to say. He grunts, lifting his head to peer at her blearily. She hasn’t seen him for nearly a year before this. While to an outsider it wouldn’t seem too unbearable, to her it isn’t just unbearable. It is indescribable.
I miss you more than I know you, Saeko wants to say to him. The sun feasts on her flesh. It passes through him, revealing nothing. He remains a mystery.
“Once upon a time, not seeing you for three days would make me antsy,” Saeko says. “And here we are.”
Saeko places a plate of curry and rice in front of him.
“Thank you!” Tanaka says, and digs into his food after pressing his hands together. His blonde hair is gleaming from a bath, which he’d promptly indulged in after returning from practice.
She looks up from her meal. “What’s happening in volleyball, Ryuu? Are you enjoying it as much as middle school?”
“Yeah,” Tanaka says. “The setter passes me the ball a lot. I might be the ace in my third year.” He says it in a matter-of-fact tone that forces Saeko to stifle a fond laugh.
“Oh, really? What about your teammates?” she continues. “Befriend any of them yet?”
Tanaka shrugs his shoulders. “They’re cool,” he says. He is silent for a moment, before his face cringes in disgust. “But there is this one guy, though. Nishinoya Yuu. He’s in my class, and he’s a real pain in the ass.”
Saeko laughs out loud at this. “What do you mean?”
“He keeps grinning at me when he receives my hits during practice games, and it’s—” Tanaka releases a frustrated groan. “-he’s so loud. Gets super into the game. Isn’t afraid to tell you if you’re not pulling your weight.”
“Has anyone on the team befriended him yet?”
“Not really. They’re all scared of him, to be honest. The people in our class, too,” Tanaka says, before his eyes sharpen visibly. “But not me. I might be the only one who can look him in the eye.”
Tanaka continues. “Last week I told him exactly what I thought about his rude attitude. He didn’t appreciate that one bit, but. I couldn’t care less.” He forces a large heap of his rice through his parted lips, masticating it in a display of bravado.
“If you say so, Ryuu,” Saeko replies, wearing a private smile, and returns her attention to her food.
She meets Nishinoya for the first time in May. He had become a frequent subject in her and Ryuu’s dinnertime chats, no longer cursed for his confidence but instead lauded for his impish charm and hilarious antics. The word “cool” was used a lot in regards to him.
“We’re home!” Tanaka calls. Saeko unplugs her earphones and departs from her room to lean against the second floor banister.
“We?” she repeats, before she sees the person standing beside him. He must be an elementary school student, she muses, but what is he doing here? It is only after noticing his hair—gelled straight up, and boasting a blonde tuft in the middle—that she figures it out. She rushes to greet him.
“Where should I put my coat, Ryuu?” Nishinoya begins, before he notices her. He grins and extends a hand. “You must be Ryuu’s sister. I’m Nishinoya Yuu. It’s a pleasure to meet you!”
His voice is booming, so self-assured it is almost infuriating. His eyes are sharp and more innocent than Ryuu’s. He holds himself tall, seeming much larger than what his lean, 4 foot 9 stature should confine him to.
She is incredibly impressed.
“Nice to meet you, Yuu,” Saeko says. She glances at Tanaka, who looks simultaneously elated and anxious. “Well, I’m going up to my room. What are you guys planning on doing?”
“Uh...” Tanaka begins, looking to Nishinoya. His friend shrugs. “There are these video games we could try.” Nishinoya grins and heads for the stairs.
“Sounds good! I don’t play video games too often, but I’m sure I’ll get the gist of them in no time.”
“Get the gist of them in no time, huh?” Tanaka repeats in wonder, before he returns the smile. “Well, my room is the first one you see upstairs. You can’t miss it. I’ll get some chips.”
Saeko lingers in place for a while as Tanaka hurries to the kitchen to amass some food. When he reemerges, he stops and stares at her.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Saeko says, but doesn’t hide her satisfied smile. “Just happy for you, Ryuu.” A small blush creeps onto his face before he pushes past her to the stairs.
Nishinoya stays late, eating dinner at their place and then retreating to the bedroom to ostensibly study, which he and Ryuu claim to be the main reason for his visit. She notices that it is near ten far too late, bursting into the bedroom as she holds her phone.
“Yuu,” Saeko says. “It’s getting late. Did you call your parents?”
“Oh. Uh...” Nishinoya falls silent for a moment. “It’s alright. They trust me. I can head home by myself just fine.” His words seem a little off, though she can’t put the feeling into words. She settles for a sigh.
“I would really prefer that someone gets you, Yuu.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve gotten home from much farther places at much later hours.”
Before she can begin to decipher what he means, Tanaka interrupts.
“Hey,” Tanaka says, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you spend the night?” Nishinoya blinks. “The spare futon is yours if you want it.”
Nishinoya is stunned for a moment, before he collects himself and replies. “You sure?”
“Absolutely, dude.”
“Alright,” Nishinoya says, as if feeling out the word on his tongue. He then smiles his usual grin, gorgeous and certain and too blinding to see through. “Alright. Sure! Thanks, Ryuu.”
Saeko grins at them, celebrating a precluded crisis, before she turns to Nishinoya again.
“Call your parents, alright?” She reminds him. He turns and looks her straight in the eyes.
“Yeah,” Nishinoya says. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”
These are the last words she hears before she retires to her bedroom, inebriated and ignorant and only nineteen years old.
Saeko attends their first game in the Fall. She is pleased to find Nishinoya and Tanaka as regular members on the court, just as they’d told her.
Nishinoya has been a near constant presence in their house since May. She has started to anticipate his frequent visits, which include dinner, video games, and spending the night. It is not uncommon for her to find Nishinoya’s laundry among theirs, the tiny, saturated t-shirts becoming less a surprise and more an expectation.
“Ryuu, go get them!” Saeko calls out, cupping her hands, before she spots Nishinoya in the corner of the court. He is crouched and has his arms outstretched in front of him, palms to the air. His face glistens under a generous coating of sweat.
The whistle sounds. The captain of the opposing team tosses a ball into the air. He watches it fall for a moment before he runs and jumps to reach it.
Saeko winces at the force he uses. She’d be afraid of the ball snapping through her wrists, but—
Nishinoya is in front of it immediately. “Got it!” he says, and receives it cleanly. The ball is up in the air, again, sent in a perfect arc to Suga.
Suga raises his hands, barely needing to reposition himself. He assesses the court before the ball falls into his palms.
“Bring it to me!” Saeko’s heart clenches as she catches Tanaka calling for the ball from the left, hand raised in the air. Suga tosses it to him.
What happens after is a moment she can only fail to describe later, though she has returned to it countless times. Held the memory in her hands, though it becomes more blurred each time she tries to reincarnate it in its entirety.
Tanaka jumps. His shins bend in the air, shoes nearly touching his spine; he extends one hand in front of him, and the other bent, braced for impact; and he slams the ball. It pushes through his opponents’ fingers, bouncing off the right side of the court.
Tanaka lands on his feet, eyes squinting, before he grins suddenly and cheers. The team is at his side immediately, rubbing his head in searing, hot affection. Nishinoya digs his hands, hard, into his shoulders, and then pushes himself up to balance on them.
Saeko can’t suppress the helpless laughter that bubbles to her lips at watching the team’s celebration. She catches them after the game, where she puts an arm around Tanaka and cuffs his ear.
“Congratulations, you guys!” she says, releasing Tanaka to card a hand through Nishinoya’s hair. Both are damp from perspiration, their breaths still labored as they grin at her.
“It’s only the first day,” Tanaka says. “The real challenge comes on Tuesday.”
“If you say so,” Saeko replies, disoriented for a moment by his sudden stoicism. “Well, Ryuu. We should get going.” She turns to Nishinoya and punches him in the arm for good measure.
“See you soon, Yuu,” Saeko says. “Don’t be a stranger.” His smile disappears from his face as she says it.
This doesn’t feel right. She begins to reach out for him, but he grins and slaps Tanaka on the shoulder.
“See you!” he says, and abandons them to join Daichi, Suga, and Asahi by the stairs. She stares after him in confusion, before Tanaka pulls her to the entrance.
“Come on, I’m hungry,” he says. Saeko wonders if he had noticed it, too: the slight change in his expression, the retreat. She feels miles from Nishinoya then. As if she has lost him for good.
Saeko heads to the door, listening to Tanaka’s cheerful relation of his day. She feels lighter, but not in the good sense; it’s as if part of her has been drained out, and she’s wading through its remains.
Their house is quieter that night than it has been for a while. She isn’t sure what to say about this, if they are any words at all.
She and Nishinoya are stretched out on the couch, a plate of popcorn placed on the coffee table. She has her feet in his lap, head buried in a couch cushion.
They are watching When Harry Met Sally, her and Tanaka’s favorite film to watch in the fall. While Nishinoya doesn’t seem to share Tanaka’s secret appreciation of romantic comedies, he sits through it all, peppering in his usual candid comments throughout.
“Oh my god, kiss already,” Nishinoya says, sounding almost offended by their useless sexual tension. Saeko laughs. There is certainly an emptiness in the room—Tanaka left to buy some popsicles, but became stranded at Ennoshita’s place at the onset of the sudden storm—so it is just her and Nishinoya tonight.
They’d eaten a large dinner and settled on the couch for a film. Turning off the lights, she is surprised at the easiness of it all. She trusts this person, who had become a part of her family so subtly she hadn’t noticed until this moment. At the same time, the reality of it forces the breath out of her lungs.
Things change so fast these days. She’s afraid if she gets any respite it’ll shatter her entirely.
“Come here, let me rub your feet,” Saeko says, patting his shin. Nishinoya grins in surprise.
“Actually?” he confirms, but pushes his legs onto her thighs before she can respond. “Cool, the royal treatment. Ryuu should get caught in the rain more often.” Saeko laughs and has the urge to punch his shoulder, but instead settles for pushing Nishinoya’s pants up to his knees.
She stills at the collection of bruises on them: an array of purple, green, and orange spots which mar his flesh. Pressing her thumb to one of them, she startles at his audible wince.
“Ouch, the hell,” he says.
“Where are these from?” she whispers, spellbound.
“Practice.”
“I see,” she says, the words coming out helpless and soft. She feels Nishinoya’s eyes on her, containing their usual, violent intensity as they search her face.
“I’m a libero. This is basically a part of the job description.”
“Ryuu has definitely told me about the nastiness of receives.”
“It’s not terrible,” Nishinoya says, his voice raising. “When I started out, they used to be painful, but after a while, I guess...you get used to it.” Saeko nods, but doesn’t respond. There are a million things she wants to say to him, then. She wants to find out who his parents are, and why he rarely spends nights at his place anymore. She wants to find out what made him fearless. Nishinoya, she wants to say, you are so full of life it has to hurt. How do you stand it?
Saeko puts her fingers on his toes, starting to rub them. She can’t speak to him, but she can repeat these habits of love. She hopes he can hear her. She hopes it is enough.
Tanaka heads to his room as soon as he returns home, greeting her only briefly before he disappears.
Since their loss at the Spring Interhigh, Tanaka had been on edge. But, while he had seemed merely distracted before, today he seems distinctly moody, responding to her in curt sentences while continually turning on his phone during dinner.
Saeko finally broaches the subject after a couple minutes of stilted silence.
“So, you seem troubled,” she says, raising her eyes to him. “To put it mildly.”
Tanaka’s shoulders tense up, before he groans. He puts his hands to his face, rubbing at it, before he looks at her through his fingers.
“Nothing gets past you, huh.”
“Not when it concerns you.”
Tanaka sighs. He seems tired, wearing a bone-weary expression which confuses her. He pushes his food around on his plate for a minute, before his hands still.
“Noya got suspended today.” He glares at the table, hand tightening on his soup spoon. “He, uh. Shoved the Vice Principal and shattered a vase.”
Her stomach turns. Nishinoya was certainly rash at times, but this didn’t seem characteristic of him. Worry bubbles in her chest.
“What happened?”
“He was trying to get our teammate Asahi to return to the team,” Tanaka explains. “He’s been ditching since we lost at the Spring Interhigh Tournament. In any case, Nishinoya confronted him about it, but Asahi just...ignored him. Or so I heard from the second years.”
“Why has he been ditching?”
“Well, he feels as if he’s a burden to the team, according to him,” Tanaka says, rubbing at his temple. “But, in my opinion, it’s because of the fight he and Noya had a couple days ago. It was...” Tanaka shudders at the memory. “...Nishinoya got physical and stuff. I had to restrain him.”
Her abdomen clenches, for a moment, before she returns her attention to her plate. “I hope he’s alright.”
“Me too,” Tanaka says, and releases a sharp, humourless laugh. “I’ve been calling him and shit all day, and he hasn’t responded.”
They don’t hear from Nishinoya at all for the duration of his suspension. He stops joining Tanaka for lunch once he returns to school, disappearing to an obscure part of campus where Tanaka can’t find him, though he searches.
When he reemerges again in the start of their second year, he’s the same as before—loud, passionate, and boundlessly energetic—but Saeko cannot help but wonder about him and where he’s been.
In the morning, Nishinoya shall board a plane to Iceland and disappear.
He has decided to spend his last night in Japan at the Tanaka household, sharing a meal and spreading out on the floor for a board game. The night passes in good laughter and shared tubs of ice cream, and far, far too fast. Before she can collect herself, Nishinoya is already glancing at the time and grimacing.
“Oh, shit,” he says. “I need to go.”
Her throat constricts, suddenly. She promised herself she wouldn’t cry.
“Well,” Nishinoya declares. “I guess this is the last time I’ll be here for a while.” His voice is surprising in his tenderness. She closes her eyes.
“Come home any time, dude,” Tanaka says, the only one whose voice is clear and dry. He is accompanying Nishinoya to the train station in the morning. He can’t possibly feel what she does in this moment: the concrete, devastating dread of watching a part of your life end in front of your eyes. These emotions are set aside for the nebulous “later,” which she once put faith in, too.
But she has come to the time she had never considered reaching. It is the future. It is time to say goodbye.
“Did you get your things?” she asks thinly, trying and failing to steady her voice. Nishinoya looks at her, eyes soft, and nods.
“Yeah. Everything,” he says. “Well.” He stands up and faces her. His face is a jumble of emotions, pained and hopeful and ready and uncertain, but she understands. She does.
“Saeko,” Nishinoya begins, before she pulls him into an embrace, holding him so tightly he coughs. “I didn’t ever say thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I—”
“Don’t thank me until it’s over,” she says. He says nothing, burying his head deeper against her shoulder.
And then the moment comes at last. He pulls from her—she can only stand there and stare—and he raises a hand, in parting, and closes the door.
Three years after Nishinoya leaves, Saeko finds herself resting against her boyfriend’s chest. It is late afternoon. She is remembering him, as she usually does around this time of day.
“Ryuu got woken up again by Yuu last night,” Saeko says, pressing her finger into the center of his chest. A grunt rumbles through his chest.
“Haven’t heard that name in a while. What for?”
“Yuu wanted to hear about the proposal,” she laughs. “He’s horrible at texting, but he compensates through calling, is what Ryuu tells me. Perhaps compensates a little too much.
“I used to hear from him, too, when Ryuu still lived here. He’d just hand me the phone for a couple minutes and I’d say hello,” she continues, before letting out a sigh. “That hasn’t happened in a while.”
“You guys used to be close?”
“Of course,” she responds indignantly. “He used to be at our house all the time in high school. I spent a lot of time around him. I had to, I guess.” She can’t help the wistful expression that spreads across her face, the helpless fondness that causes her eyes to sting. An old melody; a song she hasn’t heard in years.
“You are definitely similar.” And then he falls silent. She adjusts herself, looking up at him. His eyelashes catch the sunlight in them, turning from ash blonde to gold.
She presses her nose into him. “What’re you ruminating about?” The question is playful, though she is genuinely curious.
“Huh?” Akiteru startles, before he smiles sheepishly. “Oh. Um. I don’t really—”
“Come on,” she says. She wouldn't press him if he seemed genuinely against sharing, but from his restlessness he seems keen to get it off his chest.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” he says, and chuckles to himself. “It’s a stupid fear, really.”
“Your fears aren’t stupid.”
“But—” Akiteru seems ready to protest, before he says, sighing, “Alright. Yeah. I was just, uh. Hm. Do you ever get scared about dying?”
The question isn’t startling, necessarily, but it does jolt her from her sleepiness.
“Woah. Um—”
“I’m sorry, I get that it’s—”
“No, it’s fine. I mean, yeah. Isn’t everyone a little sad about it all the time?” she says, fisting her hand into her comforter.
“It’s just...not being able to do anything, not seeing your friends, not reading or listening to music or remembering yourself, anyone, anything...”
“The memory part is what really scares me,” she says.
“You’re scared of losing them?”
“All the time,” she says. “I mean...raising Ryuu, meeting you. Each drum tournament, all my graduations. All of them are going to be lost someday.” Her tongue resists saying the words. She looks at her boyfriend, who doesn’t look at her.
They sit in silence for a while. The sun sets.
“But we forget things, don’t we?” he continues to stare off into the distance. Somewhere apart. “In that sense, we’re dying all the time.”
Saeko sees Nishinoya in the spring. For the past four years their interactions had been limited to three-minute phone calls and dinners on the couple times a year he returns to Japan, in which Tanaka would end up stealing the majority of his attention.
But Nishinoya is remaining in Japan for a whole three days this time, here to attend Tanaka’s wedding. As Tanaka’s best man, he had returned to host the bachelor party, where he’d brought the team to play laser tag and then to spend the night at a hot springs in Sendai. Nishinoya had ended up staying the night at Tanaka’s place as well, only seeing Saeko purely coincidentally when she had video-called Tanaka the night before to get his advice on what shoes to wear.
But here he is: approaching her, a beer can in hand. She pulls him into a firm embrace. She feels him hot against her. He fits perfectly, as if nothing has changed at all.
But this is a lie. Nishinoya pulls from her and laughs.
“Your face is all puffed up and red,” he says. She glares at him and punches him in the shoulder.
“Shut up. As if you didn’t cry hysterically through your best man speech and the entire ceremony,” she counters.
“Listen, Ryuu is a great guy. He deserves it.”
Behind his good cheer, Saeko notices a certain darkness to Nishinoya’s expression she hasn’t seen before. She has the sudden urge to ask him about it, before she remembers. He wouldn’t tell her anything.
“So where are you off to next?” Saeko poses instead, putting an arm around Nishinoya as she leads them to a secluded part of the venue.
“I got a job fishing for marlins in Italy,” he replies. “Italy is nice. I might do that for a while.”
“Sounds exciting, Yuu,” is all she can say. Nishinoya grins at her.
“Yeah. I’m excited,” he says, before they spot Tanaka gesturing to Nishinoya from the dance floor. Nishinoya’s smile widens and he jumps to his feet.
“Sorry, I need to go,” he says. “I’ll say see you later!” She bristles; that word again. She wonders when he had stopped staring at her as if she was the coolest person in the world. She wonders when he had reached her height.
She sits here, watching the dance floor. She wants to join them, but she can’t stand up. This moment, too, is turning into past.
The wistfulness is suffocating her. What’s the matter? she demands of herself. You’re twenty-five! Worry about losing out on shit when you’re eighty.
But still, she wishes she was eighteen again. And for all of it to happen to her one more time.
Three years later, they are in the hospital.
“I came here as fast I could,” Nishinoya says, panting as he perches himself on the arm rest of Tanaka’s seat. His voice is loud until he notices Suzu: swathed in a peach quilt, looking up at him through bright, curious eyes. “Oh. Hey.”
Tanaka is holding her, tired and beaming. “Want to hold her?”
“Uh...” Nishinoya says, at a loss for words. He then digs his hands into his hair, eyes widening. “Dude. You’re a dad.”
“Yeah, bro. You alright?”
Nishinoya’s eyes are full of tears. He has right hand on Ryuu’s shoulder. His left remains motionless at his side.
Saeko is stunned at the couple’s placidity. They appear perfectly calm as they help Nishinoya reign in his burgeoning emotions, Tanaka teasing him lightly and Kiyoko placing a hand on Nishinoya’s arm.
“Go ahead and hold her, Yuu,” she says. Nishinoya pauses, staring at her for a moment in uncertainty, before he stretches out his hands.
Tanaka deposits Suzu in them, his hands floating around his friend’s for a while before Nishinoya settles her more firmly into his arms.
He is silent for a moment, staring at her, before he says, “She’s perfect.”
Saeko’s chest tightens at this. She perches herself on the remaining arm rest of Tanaka’s seat, leaning closer.
“Yeah,” Tanaka says. “She is.”
Nishinoya and Saeko depart from the room once Kiyoko has to breast feed, heading into the hospital’s cafeteria for lunch. Nishinoya is conversing brightly to her, hands gesticulating as he spoke.
“And did you see the way she held onto my finger, Saeko, using her entire hand, and then smiled at me?” Nishinoya says, placing a couple rice balls onto his plate. “And did you see―“
“I was there, Yuu,” she replies, and grins. “But you’re right. It was incredibly cute.”
“Yeah,” Nishinoya says, and then falls silent. She looks at him, concern flaring in her.
“I wonder,” Nishinoya interrupts her thoughts. “If I’m ever gonna be that carefree again.” He is twenty-five years old. Years had slipped from them, unnoticed. Shedding all the time.
“I look at this kid,” Nishinoya continues, “And I can’t tell if I want to be in her life or be her. My whole life ahead of me. Dreaming about epic quests and heart wrenching romances and life-endangering battles. Getting through high school, spending time at Ryuu’s and playing volleyball, waiting for my life to start. Before realizing that this is it. This is my life. And all we get are these tiny moments, again and again until we die.”
Saeko stills. Had he figured it out too? Does he feels what she feels, each day since Tanaka’s wedding? That this is it: the secret of life, stretched out in all of its brutal clarity. This is what they could not be prepared for.
No, she says to herself. Get a grip! She stands beside Nishinoya. Not sure what to say.
“Nothing’s over, Yuu,” she says. “Nothing’s changed.” She is here, touching the uncle of her niece. She is here, beside her brother’s best friend. She is here comforting a stranger.
“Whatever we lose, we can find again. It’s not too late. We’re still here.”
Here in the distant past, in the remote future. Mourning what they had learned.
“Sae-chan, do you want to say hello?”
Saeko creeps into the hospital room, seeing the baby swaddled in a blue quilt. In a burst of confidence she rushes in, clambering into the bed as she leans in and stares at him.
“Is that him?” she whispers. The baby’s face is tan and round, and his hair comes in soft, black tufts. Of course, it is. She grins, a warm feeling spreading through her chest.
“Hey, Ryuu,” she says. He is sleeping. “I’m Saeko. I’m your big sister, and I’m going to love you for the rest of my life.”