Chapter Text
☾☆
At some point in-between teaching them backyard volleyball and seeing them at a match they weren’t supposed to attend, Akiteru shows them both how to skip stones at the lake between the conifers of Tadashi’s neighborhood.
Like a fish to water, Tadashi takes to it easy — the first record he shatters is Akiteru’s fourteen, then it’s seventeen, and then the summer before their first year at Karasuno it’s twenty-two. Competing against himself, really.
Kei never really gets the hang of skipping stones. It’s fun in the moment to send them jumping across — but then it’s a shame to watch them sink, in the end, to the water’s enigmatic depths. He wishes they would come back, like boomerangs. Every winter the lake freezes over; every spring the lake thaws out; and when they return to the shore, Kei looks for a familiar shine, a familiar curve. But he never sees the same stone twice.
Eventually, Kei realizes how silly and childish it is to get attached to such things, even after he and Akiteru have long made up. So now he just watches Tadashi. Tadashi, who throws like every shot is his last shot, even though it never really is, the plink-plink-plink of skipping stones a ceaseless background beat to their shared boyhoods.
Kei is still looking for his boomerang.
☾☆
The last snowfall of that winter comes with their last Miyagi Qualifiers; their last prefecture win; their last chance at Spring Interhigh.
Kei watches the flurries fall through the bus window. They settle cautiously on undulant hills and the cant of rooftops, on car doors and highway barriers. The particulates are too thin and the weather is too warm. Some stubborn flakes adhere themselves to dry, browned grass, but most vaporize on impact against the asphalt concrete of the expressway.
The weather forecast this morning had announced an afternoon squall; Kei had scrolled ahead, as he does, for future predictions: a warm front moving in from the east in a few days and scattered rain showers the week after, sure to wash away what lingers.
He concludes, in an observant and entirely dispassionate way, that this will be the last snow of their last year at Karasuno.
The bus lurches gently to a stop in a familiar parking lot. Kei unsticks Tadashi’s warm scalp from his nylon sleeve and thumbs at the runny rheum accumulating in the inner corners of his eye.
Karasuno marches off the bus sleepy, exhausted, but satisfied.
While Tadashi addresses his team and gives a speech in that proud, sincere voice of his, Kei glows at his side.
“Thank you all so much for the hard work that I’ve seen every single one of you put in these past few months,” he announces, cheeks stretched wide and pinked from the cold, “This tournament was a culmination of all of our efforts, and proof that our grit and our spirit and our determination did not go to waste!”
Confidence clings to Tadashi like fresh snow, melting into the heat of him. Kei’s heart swells; the candid, unadulterated pride feels overfull in his chest.
“We still have a month or so until Nationals, so let’s take a breather and do our best in practice until then. I’m — I’m proud!”
His voice wavers on the last syllable. There are fresh tears pinpricking Tadashi’s lashes, these ones not from sleep. He’s not the only one emotional — Hinata and Yachi both look teary too, and a first year, eager Ishii-kun, is straight up bawling. To the rim of Tadashi’s eyes where the moisture has gathered, Kei wants to press the pads of his fingers — but under the gazes of their teammates, he holds back.
Ukai has something to say now, so Tadashi steps back and lets him speak. Kei reaches for his fingers, links their pinkies together.
“… You boys did good work today. Rest up! You’ve all worked yourselves hard.” Ukai nods, firm. Even though the dull gray sky casts almost entirely ambient light, his eyes glint like steel — reflecting, perhaps, something incandescent about the scene in front of him.
“I’m serious,” he says, turning that gaze onto Kageyama and Hinata. “About the importance of rest.”
Their freak duo nods their heads together, emphatic.
“Okay,” he sighs. “That’s all for now. Dismissed!”
The destination: the ramen shop down the road, a favorite for team dinners. Karasuno settles into a familiar mass of pairs or triples in a row. At the head of the pack, the third years take up their position; Kageyama and Hinata bicker in front about some kaiju action flick, Kei and Tadashi and Yachi in step right behind them.
“I thought the special effects were good.” Kageyama says. “But I didn’t think that Makoto and Megumi had any romantic chemistry at all.”
“That’s because you thought they were siblings, Bakageyama!”
“Yes. Which is why I was so surprised when they kissed.”
“Haha. You should’ve seen your face!”
Kei tunes them out in favor of watching Tadashi out of the corner of his eye. He just looks so happy. There’s white flurries sticking to his hair. He’s showing Yachi something on his phone that the both of them are laughing over, then in the next second he’s turning around to break up an argument between the second years.
He plugs his earbuds in and offers one. Tadashi accepts it easily, slipping it into his ear and continuing to chatter with Yachi without interruption.
“Oi! What’s the point of keeping headphones around your neck if you’re just going to use earbuds, Stingyshima? You don’t look as cool as you think you do!”
“I see that your lips are moving but I can’t hear you.” Kei deadpans, staring straight ahead and avoiding all eye contact. “These are noise cancelling.”
“Eh?! But you’ve only got one in!”
He ignores that.
“Rude! Meanie-shima!” Hinata huffs and turns his attentions to Tadashi. “Hey, Yamaguchi! Can you hear me?”
He somehow manages to walk backwards while waving both of his arms like a windmill. Kei forgives him for this clownery, because it makes Tadashi giggle, and he likes it when Tadashi giggles.
“I see you laughing, Captain-kun!” Hinata accuses, then steps back too far and bumps soundly into Kageyama’s shoulder. Their setter staggers and rights himself against the curb.
“Watch it, boke! And shut up, we’re still in public,” Kageyama barks.
Tadashi breaks into snickers when Hinata turns around to thump his jacket paws against Kageyama’s back in an incessant rhythm. Yachi’s laughter warms the air.
“Don’t worry, Tsukki,” Tadashi confides, leaning into his side and gazing up through his lashes. Kei’s stomach does a familiar double-swoop. “I think you look very cool.”
“Thanks.” Kei says. “I try very hard, you know.”
“Of course you do.” Tadashi teases. His eyes light. “Here, you have snowflakes in your hair, Tsukki! Let me get them.”
Kei makes a noise in his throat and grumbles but allows Tadashi to pull him down by the sleeve, exposing the top of his blonde mop. Fingers comb through his hair, against his scalp, at his temples.
Then comes the ruffling. He wrinkles his nose and pulls away.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Kei huffs, futilely smoothing his hair down again. It’s too long for this now. His hands go back into his pockets, but he doesn’t complain when he feels the warmth of Tadashi’s shoulder knocking against his.
“You know, I really think we’re going to win it all this year,” Tadashi says, quietly, into his windbreaker’s upturned collar. “I really, really think so.”
And because Tadashi sounds so convinced, so candid, so simple and honest, Kei believes him.
He’s overcome with such familiar affection then. If they were first years, if they were second years, that feeling would have nowhere to go. But because they’re not — because Kei is still addicted to the rush he gets every time when his hypothesis of if Tadashi loves me back, then these are the things I’m allowed to do is reproven — he bends at the waist and presses a kiss to the top of his green locks. Caught snowflakes melt warmly under his lips.
“Gross,” Kageyama says.
“Shut up.”
Any malice is softened by the tickle of Tadashi’s hair; it’s sweetened by the peal of Tadashi’s wondrous laughter, which rings clear like a bell, carried away by the winter wind.
☾☆
After a raucous dinner out with the whole team, the two-story Tsukishima house feels especially quiet. Vacuous, like it is sometimes — like the empty space left in a candle holder after the wax has burnt through. Even when Akiteru still lived at home, the four of them had barely filled up the space, a feat only ever achieved with the addition of Tadashi’s presence.
Kei walks into the kitchen and, evidently, his father had been on his way out. The interruption startles them into an impasse. A sunset showdown. He stares between his mother’s crows feet and his father’s slack, brown-dotted jaw.
Breaking away from their weighty gaze, Kei observes the pattern of tiny wildflowers on his mother’s shirt. It continues seamlessly at the sleeves: a department store find. New.
“Hello, Kei.” his mother forces. Even without looking, Kei can see the set of her mouth at the corners, the fine wrinkles there. “Are you hungry?”
His father brushes past and heads into the study. Kei watches him go. There was red on his cheeks and a furrow in his brow.
“No.” he says, then moves to grab an apple from the fruit stand. “It’s fine.”
“Okay. How was the tournament?”
“We won.”
She hums, unsurprised. “Good job. Now you can study for your exams, right? Just because Center Test is over doesn’t mean you can fail all of your classes.”
“When have I ever failed a class, Mom,” Kei says, tiredly. He runs hot water over the apple’s skin and scrubs.
“Well, just checking. Oh — by the way, Akiteru is coming home next weekend for something. He has an announcement, he says.”
“Huh. What about?”
“Oh, I’m not sure. Akari isn’t coming with him, though. I hope they haven’t broken up,” she muses, “I liked her quite a lot.”
“Okay,” he says.
“Also, I know you said you don’t know yet, but have you thought more about what you want to major in? It’s good to have an idea before you go, you know.”
“Still history.”
“Mm. Well, keep thinking about it, okay?”
“Okay.” Kei dutifully answers, then turns off the water. His jaw feels tight. What’s the point of asking if you already know the answer is something you don’t like?
☾☆
When he gets upstairs, there’s a letter on his desk waiting for him. Kei supposes his mother thought it would be a nice surprise. The dark indigo seal draws his eye immediately, breath hitching in his throat as he tears it open and confirms his suspicions — a letter, from Sendai. He’s being recruited for the volleyball team.
He skims the fine print and all the legal details in a daze.
Kei hears the pale huff of laughter, distant, as if loosed from someone else’s chest. He’s being recruited for Sendai University.
It’s not the best volleyball team he’s had offers from, but it’s certainly the highest ranked in academics — and the most difficult to get into. It’s a really good offer. Tadashi would be proud. He should tell Tadashi.
He folds it neatly back into the envelope and slides it to the far corner of his desk.
There’s a text from Hinata in the group chat that Kei doesn’t read. He opens it now.
From: Hinata Shouyo
[1 file attached.]
HAHA! No more bad luck this year!!!
From: Yamaguchi Tadashi
lucky!!! i always get bad fortunes in academics..
From: Yachi Hitoka
You still need to study, hinata-kun!! Remember!! ( ≧Д≦)
From: Kageyama Tobio
[Kageyama Tobio disliked a message.]
From: Hinata Shouyo
hey! what was that for!!! TOBIO!!! RUDE!!
[Hinata Shouyo disliked a message.]
From: Kageyama Tobio
[Kageyama Tobio disliked a message.]
From: Hinata Shouyo
[Hinata Shouyo disliked a message.]
He ignores this and opens up his conversation with Yachi. She’s attached two files: one, of the photoshoot they’d done together as a team, himself in the back where he’d wanted to be. Then, two, a much more detailed close-up.
Kei stares. His jaw, really… looks like that? Another one of Yachi’s photoshop miracles.
From: Yachi Hitoka
Hi, tsukishima-kun! please take a look! i’m going to use these for fundraising! we’re going to need flights this year, so they’re going to be going everywhere!
To: Yachi Hitoka
It looks really good
But for the second one can you make it so that I’m not looking directly at the camera
I don’t usually do that in photos
He doesn’t get a chance to put his phone down before he gets yet another notification. But because it’s from Tadashi, naturally, he opens it.
From: Yamaguchi Tadashi
hey did u see yachi-chan’s poster?? it looks sooo coool!
you look SO COOL in it!
hehehe i can’t wait for everybody to see your eyes and how BEAUTIFUL and COOL they are
my boyfriend is so coool!!!!
To: Yamaguchi Tadashi
Embarrassing, Yamaguchi
From: Yamaguchi Tadashi
hehe
[Yamaguchi Tadashi hearted a message.]
Kei clicks his phone shut.
Then he swipes it open again and drafts one last message.
To: Yachi Hitoka
Nevermind
It’s fine. I don’t want to make more work for you
Looks good as is
After that, he silences his phone and starts on the mound of late work he’s been neglecting in favor of staying after for extra volleyball practice. First year Tsukishima Kei would be appalled at his priorities.
It’s half-past midnight when he finally crawls into bed. The letter on his desk seems to blare, bright-white, in the dark of his room. Kei twists to face the wall.
Sendai University is close by. The city is only a few hours away by train. Tadashi has already gotten his letter, he knows. He’d done well on his entrance exams and applied the normal way. His grades are good, and he wants to study engineering.
Tadashi could go to Sendai. And now Kei can, too.
But Tadashi could also do better.
He traces the invented constellations that creep along the tops of the walls and scatter across the ceiling, made up of tiny glow-in-the-dark stickers of stars and moons and asteroids. The sheet had been Tadashi’s first birthday gift to him. A reminder of their first November as friends. They had put them up together — or rather, Tadashi pointed to where to place them, and Kei stretched tall on his toes to stick them there. The highlighter glow has mostly faded by now, but Kei can’t bear to take them down.
Kei flips over and checks his phone. It’s a quarter til two.
He scrolls to the first page of apps, finger hovering over his only favorited contact, and hits call.
“Yamaguchi?” he murmurs into the silence of his room.
“Hey, Tsukki?” Tadashi muffles a yawn; it crackles, turns into tremors through the speaker. “What’s … up,”
Cheek squished against the pillow, Kei smiles.
“Did you know that the longest river in Japan is only five percent of the length of the longest river in Asia,”
“Well, that makes sense, Tsukki,” Tadashi mumbles. “We’re an island nation.”
“Mm. It’s the Shinano River, which is 367 kilometers long. Located in Eastern Honshu.” Kei recites.
“What’s... the other one? In Asia, I mean… the longest one.”
“The Yangtze River in China. Over 6300 kilometers.”
“Wow,” Tadashi says, yawning again. “Wonder how long it would take to…”
He trails off. Kei waits, and traces the path it would take through the Japanese Alps with the celestial bodies on his ceiling: take your second left at Saturn, then a leisurely stroll through the Plateosaurus asteroid belt, then turn right just before you reach the Tikachu galaxy.
The sound of Tadashi’s snoring comes filtering in, crackling and choppy, as if only half of his breaths are audible to the microphone. Eventually, Kei drifts off too, soothed by its electronic rumble.
☾☆
The nice, warm feeling of Tadashi’s thigh against his is stolen unceremoniously away by Kageyama, who is stuck on a homework question and requires Tadashi’s assistance. Kei glares daggers into the back of his marbled composition notebook.
“I didn’t realize knowledge of derivatives was needed to play for Japan’s National Volleyball Team these days,” he says, feeling petty. “When was it added to the recruitment process?”
“Shut up, Tsukishima!” Kageyama growls.
“Quiet!” Hinata blares, just as loud. “We’re in the library!”
Yachi shushes them frantically, hands flapping and blonde ponytail whipping back and forth as if some disapproving bookkeeper will materialize out of the ether to shake her scathing gray topbun at them. “Shhh!“
Tadashi exhales an amused chuckle and points to the page again. “I think you dropped the minus sign at this step. Otherwise, your work looks good. Fix that and do the numbers again?”
“Oh. Thanks, Yamaguchi.”
A phone alarm goes off. Han Seungyeon’s dulcet tones come crooning from the speaker before Tadashi leans over and muffles it with the palm of his hand, cutting the song off prematurely. Kei can see him tapping at buttons on his phone and skipping past the current session.
He tuts, snatching it away and holding it just outside of Tadashi’s reach. “The point of the Pomodoro Method is so that you take breaks,” Kei reminds him. He starts the break timer again.
“Fine…” Tadashi pouts at him, drawing out the whine. “Do you still need help, Kageyama?”
“I’m done with math, thanks,” Kageyama mutters. He’s focused for once, a rare sight outside of the volleyball court.
Hinata pipes up from the end corner of the table where he and Yachi are huddled. “Oh, Yamaguchi, can you help me out with this? Yachi helped me edit already, so can you just check my grammar?”
“Sure,” Tadashi says, “Is it Japanese?”
“Yeah!”
“I’ll do it,” Kei interjects, leaning over to snatch the paper out of Hinata’s hand before Tadashi puts yet another task on his plate. “I’m better at Japanese than he is.”
Unphased, Tadashi beams. “Thanks, Tsukki!”
Kei scoffs and ignores the heat of his cheeks. Tadashi flops onto the table with a soft thump, settling into scrolling through his phone. He sticks in an earbud and, out of habit, offers the other to Kei. He pops it in. KARA’s poppy beats resume through the tinny speaker.
Hinata’s essay is fine. His grades are still hopeless, but he’s at least keeping up with the material, and it’s been a good while since he and Kageyama have failed an exam. Studying together as a group is helpful for all of them, as much as Kei hates to admit it. He settles back in his chair and starts going down the page in purple gel. Littering it are Yachi’s comments in loopy, heart-dotted cursive.
The relative quiet is soothing in its ambience: the tap-tap of fingers at keyboards, the shwip of the turning of thin vellum pages, the thunk of a student worker re-shelving reference books. Kei has always enjoyed the dusty smell of old books and the peace that typically accompanies it —
“What’s heavier, a gram of aluminum or a gram of hydrogen,” Kageyama says.
Kei lets his eyes shutter for a second, brows furrowed, anticipating the throb of his temples.
“Ooh, I know this one!” The headache comes. Hinata slams his open palm against the mahogany table in a muted slap. “A gram of aluminum, ‘cause aluminum has a higher atomic mass than hydrogen!”
Hinata slumps back into his chair, proud.
Kageyama nods very seriously and scribbles this logic down.
“I… they are both the same weight, Kageyama.” Yachi stares between the both of them incredulously. She leans over and pinches the eraser end of his pencil to stop its trajectory. The scribbling stops.
“Huh? But aluminum… is heavier than hydrogen.” Kageyama’s nose is scrunched up, forehead pinched like he’s stuck at the second-floor vending machine deciding between chocolate milk or Yakult.
“Yes, but… they are both… a gram.” Tadashi spells out for him. “So they have… the same weight.”
Hinata wears an identically confused expression. “But aluminum is… heavier… than hydrogen.”
Kei slumps back so his head hits the top of the cheap library chair and drops Hinata’s paper to cover his face, groaning quietly into the notebook.
From: Yamaguchi Tadashi
dad made coffee!!!! says you can have some too if you hurry :)))
To: Yamaguchi Tadashi
I thought he still hated me.
From: Yamaguchi Tadashi
consider it an olive branch
maybe he’s changing his mind!!
hurry, tsukki!!!
☾☆
There’s a Ginkgo tree on the patch of grass before the walkway turns into the Yamaguchi house. Reminders of winter are evident in its gray bark and exposed boughs. But unlike in autumn, when the odious stench of rotting Ginkgo leaves repels any thought of approach, Kei steps close and admires fresh green: early spring leaves tip the bare branches.
His prediction about the snow, Kei’s smugly but still detachedly satisfied to see, is correct — much of it has already melted, the pavement cleared out, dewy morning grass glimmering with new moisture.
He knocks twice.
Tadashi’s father answers the door. Pale, pinched eyes give him a once over behind wire-rimmed spectacles before standing by to let him in. Kei is used to this scrutiny now, but it still tires him out. So sorry for turning your only child into a homosexual, he thinks bitterly, but it’s seven AM, so give me a break.
“Yamaguchi is upstairs,” he says. Stiff. “Come in.”
“Hello, Yamaguchi-san. Thank you.”
It’s a nice house, the neighborhood over. The lots here are a little bit smaller and a little bit closer together. Tadashi’s house has always felt warm and smelled nice. When Kei was a kid he delighted in the safety he found in its corners and crannies, so disparate from the bare vastness of his own home, left even emptier after Akiteru had moved out. He follows Tadashi’s father into the kitchen, dodging a console table covered in knick-knacks.
Even the kitchen is cluttered everywhere. Kei wonders how Tadashi had grown into such a good cook, how he finds the space to practice in here with the counterspace nonexistent.
He takes a break from studying Tadashi’s father’s neat leather loafers to count the spices. They overflow the rack, littering the countertop. Cumin, paprika, cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander, turmeric.
“How is school, Tsukishima,”
“Fine, Yamaguchi-san.”
Basil, black pepper, cilantro, garlic, spearmint, ground ginger, star anise, salt. Sesame oil, soy sauce, black vinegar.
“You can have some coffee if you’d like.” He gestures to the cupboard where they keep the mugs as if Kei doesn’t already know. As if there isn’t one in there that’s kept specifically for him, a little green and yellow number with a stegosaurus and the words Monday’s, huh? in thin, cartoonish font floating in a speech bubble above it. As if he didn’t bring a travel mug anyway because they’re on their way to school.
“Okay,” Kei says. “Thank you.”
The clink of dog tags accompanies the Yamaguchi’s old Shiba as she trots into the kitchen, tail going hypersonic when she catches Kei’s scent.
Kei bends down to scratch the back of her ears, murmuring softly, “Hi, Momo.”
Her tan-golden fur is tinged with silver in the early light. She’s thinner than the last time Kei remembers seeing her, the price of a second round of chemotherapy, skin clinging to bone. Still sweet, though. Momo rumbles happily when Kei runs his hands along her side, nosing at his jeans. Her fur tickles the bare patch of ankle that his pants don’t cover — even with the extra long inseam.
He twists open his metal thermos and fills it up. Not a second too soon, because in the next moment, Tadashi is barreling down the stairs and into the kitchen. Betraying him are that one piece of bedhead hair that refuses to stay down and his sleepy droopy eyes.
“We’re going to be late,” Kei tells him. “How did I wake up later, get breakfast, walk all the way here, and still get ready before you?”
“Sorry, Chuu— ki,” Tadashi responds sheepishly, grabbing a boiled egg out of the fridge and scarfing it down with astonishing speed. He admits, cheeks pink, “I fell back asleep after I texted you. Hi, Momo!”
Kei sighs, grabbing Tadashi’s pre-packed bento box lunch out of the fridge and unzipping his backpack’s front pocket to slip it inside. Tadashi hums thankfully around a banana.
“I could drive you two to school,” his father offers. A momentously generous offer.
“Ah, it’s okay dad, we’re going,” Tadashi flaps a dismissive hand and shoulders his school bag. He follows Kei to the front entrance.
“Wear your tall rain boots. It’s slushy out there.”
“Aww, but I’m already wearing these jeans…”
Despite Tadashi’s inability to plan ahead and wear proper pantswear to go with the proper footwear, it doesn’t seem to faze him at all. He steps in every unmarred snowdrift they pass, crystals squeaking underfoot and trail of footprints left behind in the white. Kei takes great pleasure in the heavy crunch of road salt under his boots.
“Enjoy the snow while it lasts,” Kei tells him, reluctantly awakened by the coffee. He warms his fingers over the hot fumes. “It’s going to be gone in a week.”
“Thank god!” Tadashi chirps. “I think the lake’s going to melt soon. Un-freeze? Defrost?”
“Thaw.”
“Yeah! I think the lake’s going to thaw out soon.”
“You say that as if you don’t check every single weekend.”
“Well, I’m excited to see the frogs again!”
“And all the insects and miscellaneous anthropods that come with them.” Kei shudders, determined to stay miserable despite how spending time with Tadashi always makes him feel anything but.
Tadashi lapses into describing the symbolic imagery of some J-Pop girl group’s debut album over the weekend and Kei lets him ramble. He makes a mental note to check them out anyway. For now, though, he relaxes his tense jaw and forms the words on his tongue, tasting their shape. To get them out of his mind.
“… Tsukki?”
Kei blinks. “What?”
“Are you going to tell me what you’re thinking about?” Tadashi gazes innocently up at him and Kei’s traitorous heart skips a beat. Unfair. Tadashi must know how lovely he looks in the morning light, freckles highlighted in pink by the chill — logical, simple cause-and-effect, as the places where the sun shines first in the summer must also be the places where the wind blows first in the winter, but unfair all the same.
“Um,” Kei’s tongue darts out to trace his lower lip. “Have you thought about where you want to go…”
Tadashi’s eyes widen, just a fraction.
“… on vacation?”
Then he’s back to looking bemused again. “Huh? You mean like, with family?”
That doesn’t make sense as a question. Not at all.
“I mean like. Um. Like, with me.”
He could’ve just stopped there.
“After graduation. Like… with the other third years. People do that,” Kei defends himself, racking his gigantic, useless brain. “The summer after graduation.”
“Oh, yeah!” Tadashi beams, then falls back to link their arms together. Kei's own arm flops uselessly. “Did Yachi bring it up to you too? It’s like, a tradition, apparently.”
“Uh. Yeah, she did.”
“Well, I’m planning to get my license soon, so we could do a road trip! We could drive around the mountain, or go all the way to Tokyo, or just go down the coast — ”
“Somewhere with lots of cliffs that I can throw myself off of, ideally.“
“Do you think we would have to rent a car? I don’t know if my mom’s car can fit all of us above-average height people, but if we’re booking hotels and stuff too.. ”
“Will hotel beds fit all of us above-average height people?“
“We can just sleep in the car, if you’d prefer.”
“Ugh. No thanks.”
“I will make you have fun on this trip, Tsukishima Kei!”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Kei cuts him off as they round the bend to where Karasuno’s iron gates sit, at the top of the hill. In the early light they look almost pearly. “A lot can happen before graduation. Still time for a vampire apocalypse.”
“Or an alien invasion.”
“Or an X-class solar flare.”
“Or a nuclear war with America.”
“So don’t start booking hotels yet, because I don’t think you can cancel them if you’re dead.”
Tadashi snickers. “If we all die, then you’ll never figure out where I want to go for college!”
“Hey — what?”
Tadashi releases his arm, mischievous smile giving way to one more open — soft, unsure. Kei hasn’t seen this look of his in a long while. Something nostalgic in it. “Don’t worry, Tsukki. Once I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know.”
☾☆
“Have you been planning for college?” His school career counselor asks, shrewd eyes scrutinizing him from across her heavy mahogany desk.
Kei has been told that he seems like a planner. This is partially true. He’s a preparer — he thinks often about the future, to make sure to wear his rain jacket in humid clear weather or layers in those mercurial fall days, the ones that are cold in the mornings but sweltering by the time classes let out. But planning requires exact knowledge. He didn’t plan for Ushijima to spike in that exact moment; he had been prepared for it, for when a mistake would eventually be made. But he can see how the two can get confused.
Perhaps this is why every teacher of his has been completely stumped by his vague, amorphous thoughts about the future, as if Kei isn’t the student they thought they’d have to worry about today.
“No,” Kei tells her honestly.
“Hm.” she tsks. “Have you at least been thinking about it?”
Unbidden, his gaze drifts to the classroom window. Outside, Tadashi makes faces, freckles scrunched up against the glass, and Hinata windmills his arms in an obvious attempt to distract him. The top of Yachi’s head barely reaches above the pane — Kei knows she must be on her tiptoes, round eyes froglike and two tiny fists giving him a double thumbs-up. Kageyama, very slowly and deliberately, places the flat of his palm against the window.
“Quite a bit,” he says.
☾☆
The new first years are a promising bunch. One is tall — taller than even Kei was at the start of high school, and despite how much the first year claims he’s done, Kei secretly hopes he keeps growing. It would be nice to not be known as the tallest guy on Karasuno’s Men’s Volleyball team for generations. Kei would rather leave a different legacy, like being actually good at blocking, or being boyfriend of the captain that led them to win nationals. Or something.
At any rate, adding height to the team is always a good thing. Last year had given them a crop of first-years that were decidedly lacking in that department. Though Noya-san had been personally elated for Imai, their new starting libero this year, to continue his thunderous tradition.
So, despite his reluctance — and at Tadashi’s personal captainly request — he’s taken the tallest one, Suzuki, under his wing. They’ll need more middle blockers on the court next year once he and Hinata leave.
Kei’s fairly certain Suzuki prefers Hinata, though. He’s fairly certain all of the underclassmen like Hinata the best.
In the middle of his precise and detailed explanation of what a guess block is and when to use it, he watches as Hinata dives to save a ball that was clearly going out of bounds and tumbles into the shyest of the new bunch, bringing him down too.
“So sorry, Kojima-kun!” Hinata laughs, pulling the first-year up and energizing him with a rousing slap on the back.
“Um — ah, it’s all right, Hinata-senpai!” Kojima is smiling at the attention.
“No, no! I’ll make it up to you! Senpai will treat you after practice sometime!”
Kei rolls his eyes.
“Any questions,” he intones to Suzuki.
“Ahh.. I don’t think so.” Suzuki shifts his weight, shoulders drooped from a habitual hunch. Kei sympathizes. “Would you mind… practicing read blocking with me?”
“No.” Kei answers, quite bluntly. “Captain says I need to work on my receives.”
As if summoned, said captain materializes out of nowhere to squeeze Kei’s shoulder in a gentle, but very firm, manner. Kei knows he’s being scolded, but he can’t be sulky at the touch.
“Captain also says you need to bond with the first years.” Tadashi beams. “So you are excused just for today!”
“Great,” Kei says, “So generous.”
Tadashi squints at him, lower lip stuck out stubbornly in a pout. His brows pinch together and his wide eyes scrunch up, creating a puffy, expressive effect. “Tsukki, be nice!”
Heh. Cute.
Kei wanders to the center net, beckoning his arm for Suzuki to follow. He only glances back when he doesn’t immediately hear footsteps. The first year’s jaw has gone slack, eyes round like saucers, and he sends panicked glances between his back and Tadashi’s, who has turned to correct one of their second year’s serving form.
He sighs. Was Suzuki always this oblivious?
“Come on,” Kei drones, “You’re the one who asked.”
“Y — yes! Yes, Tsukishima-senpai!”
“Just Tsukishima-san is fine.”
“Okay, Tsukishima-san!”
Kei feels Tadashi’s gaze on him acutely through the rest of practice. It settles into a comfortable weight, a cozy security blanket, a homely kind of feeling — Tadashi’s eyes on him, his unconditional adoration propelling him to greater heights than he’d ever dare to dream of alone. Kei had been pretty sure that he was going to stop growing after his first year at Karasuno, too. He thinks that sometimes it was only Tadashi’s utter, irrational belief in him — Tsukki is 188 cm! He’s going to be 190 cm soon! — that made him keep going.
Going, going, never stopping. Not even now.
He raises a hand to wick away the sweat pooling at his brow and braces his hands on his knees.
“You okay, Tsukishima-san?”
“In a second,” Kei says. As if pulled, Tadashi lifts his gaze from the other side of the gym where he and Kageyama discuss strategy over scraps of paper. Unlike when they’d steal shy moments first year, Tadashi returns his smile and doesn’t look away, but a familiar strawberry blush wends around the sides of his neck and into his short-cropped hair. Kei longs to taste it.
He straightens again. “One more rally.”
☾☆
“You’re going to burn through all your birthday and New Year’s money,” Kei informs him, “and then what will you do for the other nine and a half months of the year. You won’t have enough money for my birthday present.”
Tadashi scoffs and waves him off with a jerk of his freckled shoulder. He sifts through his fabric dog-print wallet and counts the bills under his breath, five, ten, fifteen, “No, no! Ennoshita-san and Sawamura-san always did this for us! It’s a tradition. Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two…”
Kei exhales through his nose. He pulls out his own wallet, simple leather, and retrieves two crumpled bills to slide them across the counter. “Let me at least buy yours.”
“.. Twenty-four, aw, Tsukki!” Tadashi is so easy to please. He beams, lips lifting at the corners. “Thank you!”
“It’s nothing.” Kei says, because he’d buy him ten billion without blinking, so really, this is nothing.
Tadashi finally finishes, laying the cash on the counter next to Kei’s. Then he snorts, wrinkling his nose. “But I’m already buying yours! We could’ve just traded.”
“You’re buying mine for me as my captain. I’m buying yours for you as your boyfriend. These buns are not the same, Yamaguchi.”
He grins. “Okay.”
Biting wind blasts Kei directly in the face when he pushes open Sakanoshita’s glass door. The bell that hangs just above the entryway chimes sweetly. He winces, cheeks stinging, and holds it open for Tadashi to make his way outside with a plate stacked high with steaming pork buns. Watering eyes and a red nose are but a small price to pay for subsidized dinner.
“Pork buns!” Tadashi calls out, distributing them gleefully. “Nice work at practice today, everybody! Make sure to fuel your bodies!”
He bends at the knees to hand one to Yachi. “And one for our precious manager!”
Yachi beams. “Thank you, Yamaguchi-kun!”
“Thank you, Yamaguchi-san!” comes the chorus from the rest of the team at her example.
Kageyama accepts his with a grave and reverent nod, as if Tadashi is handing him the keys to the city and not a two hundred yen dumpling.
“Thank you, Yamaguchi.” Then he hands it back. “But can you hold onto it for a second?”
Tadashi blinks and accepts it, looking warily up at his vice captain. Kei has a horrible tingling sense of impending doom and gloom — shrimpysense, Tadashi had named it, like Spideysense but just for Hinata!
And sure enough, Sakanoshita’s bell clamors again, this time abruptly. The slam of the door against the hinges adds to the discordant harmony. Hinata comes marching out, waving two ice pops in the air.
“Kageyama!” He bellows. “Imai-kun, do you have the timer ready?”
“Ready!”
“What are you doing, Hinata…” Tadashi starts.
He hands one of the ice pops to Kageyama, who rips apart the plastic covering.
“We are competing!” Hinata announces.
“To see whose brain works faster,” Kageyama adds.
“By…?” Kei asks, wearily.
“Seeing who gets brain freeze first!”
Yachi’s brown, worried eyes flick between them. “Kageyama…”
“You’ll kill off both of your remaining two brain cells,” Kei mutters. But then again, if perhaps they each drop down to zero brain cells each, that will put them in a catatonic, vegetative state and keep them in the hospital and out of Kei’s way for the rest of their lives. “Continue.”
“Three… two…” Imai counts.
Tadashi sends him a desperate glance. “Not you too!”
“… one… go!”
Kageyama wolfs his down in two clean bites. Hinata distends his jaw and smushes the entire thing into his mouth. Like crushing a bottle of toothpaste from the tail in, Kei watches it compress and fold into ridges before the whole thing is swallowed up by the cavern. He wonders if either of them had even stopped to chew.
Both of them react at the same time: Hinata doubles over and groans — wails, really. Kageyama clutches at his temples.
Distantly Kei sees somebody — a second year he doesn’t pay much attention to — is filming, while the first years are laughing; entertained. Most of them. Suzuki is running into the shop asking for hot water in that panicked voice of his like he’s knocked over the volleyball trolley and sent them all scattering again.
“Oh my god,” Tadashi groans, lips pinched like he’s about to launch into another one of his captainly lectures.
Kei throws his head back and laughs.
To: Yamaguchi Tadashi
It’s been above ten degrees every night for the past week
Also, it just rained
From: Yamaguchi Tadashi
:D
meet me by the lake!!!
☾☆
Tadashi has been waiting all winter for the lake to thaw. Kei knows this, because he has collected every one of his weekly updates into a photo collage of wintry scenery saved to his phone. It’s not quite National Geographic material — Kei’s not sure if Tadashi has ever heard such advice like Rule of Thirds or even the most basic make sure your thumb isn’t covering the camera lens, but he downloads each image anyway.
Nature is always better in photos. There’s none of the chill that cuts through Kei’s fisherman sweater, no dampness to the soft dirt that dispels any thought of sitting down for a rest by the shore.
The lake looks larger in them, too — in reality, it’s only a part-time lake. During dry summers it shrinks underground until official provincial classification would probably prefer to call it a pond. But lakes have names, and ponds have koi fish, and as part-time lake and part-time pond, this has neither. And it’s the only thing they have for kilometers around, so the locals can call it as they like. So they call it a lake.
Kei inhales. The late afternoon sun skims the tops of the black pines. Were it just a week earlier, it would be dipping under the horizon, but now the days are beginning to lengthen again. The air is brisk; it smells like wet soil and rotting algae, like melting snow and cedar trees. Pungent, evocative smells. It smells cold — in the same way that the taste of wasabi is more of a sensation.
Kei wonders what the air in Sendai smells like.
Occasionally, Tadashi stops to draw his arm back and send a stone skipping across the surface: his favorite activity; the reason they’re here. Kei is still looking for the perfect pebble. The perfect pebble is smooth and flawless and impossible.
“Hm,” Tadashi says, watching the ripples fade. “That was bad.”
“Four is a lot,” Kei tells him, only the slightest bit sour. Four is his personal record.
Tadashi perks up. “Here, Tsukki!”
Kei takes the rock being pressed insistently into his hands with a grunt. He balances it at the very top of the stack.
He’s building a cairn on a ridge away from the lapping water and away from the shade of the conifer trees that populate the forest. It’s the first patch that dries from the sun, the earth solid underneath. The stones that Tadashi hands him always end up here. Every time a storm sweeps through Miyagi, it takes his memorial with it, and every time after Kei builds it up again.
He has to adjust the foundation a little bit to keep it all in balance. It’s a constant, evolving process.
Tadashi winds up to toss one. He draws back the line of his serving arm, taut and powerful — Kei’s so busy watching him and the strong, confident boy he’s become that he only catches the tail end of the resulting skip, counting four, five bounces.
“Tsukki!” Tadashi crows, turning around to meet Kei’s eyes with his bright, dazzling, starstruck gaze. “Did you see that! Seven skips!”
Kei grins, fond. “So cool, Yamaguchi.”
He watches as Tadashi skips back to meet him and pulls him to his feet. One side of his lips tends to quirk when he’s thinking — the right side. Tadashi stretches up on his tiptoes and aims a peck for the corner of Kei’s mouth. Kei, anticipating this, turns his head so he hits his lips instead.
Though open initially in surprise, he feels Tadashi’s soft, warm lips curve into a smile underneath his before he’s pulling away too soon.
“What was that for,” Kei says.
“Just ‘cause,” Tadashi grins.
He links their palms together.
“I got an acceptance letter today,” Tadashi says. “From, um. Tokyo Tech.”
Kei smiles down at his pile of rocks. “Of course you did. I’m proud of you. Any school would want you.”
Tadashi glows, shining like starlight, and balls his fists into Kei’s sweater to pull him down for a firmer kiss.
No matter how often they get to do this, it feels like the first time every time. Sometimes he tastes like fresh summer fruit, or sticky rice, or salty fries, but there’s a familiar undercurrent to it always. Today, though Kei drinks in the fleeting scent of strawberry chapstick, the wax on his lips is tasteless — this is preferable, because instead Tadashi tastes like himself. Just Tadashi.
When Tadashi pulls away, he feels something being pushed into his hands. Kei wrinkles his nose when he realizes what it is.
“Here, Tsukki. I think this is the one!”
It really is a nice pebble. Soil cakes its smooth bottom, rubbing into the gauze of his athletic tape when Kei flips it over. Tadashi must have had to dig it out of the dirt. It’s perfectly flat on one side, and it has a nice, hefty weight to it.
Kei trudges to the lakeshore and watches the blue water. As if pulled along, Tadashi returns himself to his side.
He tosses the stone. It skips, once. Then sinks. Like — well, a stone.
Tadashi’s laugh carries, even though the thin air. Logically Kei knows that every human on the planet is made of residual matter from distant and ancient exploded stars, but whatever mysterious forces of the universe exist, they have deigned to make Tadashi’s particular arrangement more pleasing and melodious than your average stardust-being. And Kei is forever grateful for it.
“Don’t laugh at me,” Kei accuses, but he’s grinning too.
Tadashi smiles at him again in the way that he does that lights up his whole face, cheeks stretching wide, and says —
“I love you, Tsukki.”
The calls of wild ducks that winter beside the lake are quieter today, a sign that many have already begun the return journey north. Pine boughs shiver and shake in the vivifying wind. Early bullfrogs stretching their legs for the first time since fall chorus among the waving reeds, singing proud: alive again, alive again, alive now.
But above all, the melody of Tadashi’s voice makes itself clear. It is soft and strong and full of conviction.
When he finds his voice again, it comes weak and faraway to his own ears.
Into this quiet afternoon, Kei breathes, “Yamaguchi,”
Tadashi laughs, a little bit awkwardly this time, and scratches the back of his neck. “Um.. it’s okay, Tsukki. I just... wanted to say it. You don’t have to say anything right now.”
He adds: “But I do. I love you.”
And there it is again: because Tadashi sounds so convinced, so candid, so simple and honest, Kei believes him. The same way he says a million other impossible things that become immutable truths of the universe as soon as he says them: you’re the coolest person in the world, we’re going to win nationals, and now: I love you.
“Yamaguchi,” he repeats, like a skip in a song: buffering, buffering. “Yamaguchi…”
Tadashi exhales, fluttering and fleeting, and steps closer. How does he always know what Kei needs?
Out of the corner of his vision, their hands intertwine.
Tsukishima Kei is not in the business of predicting the future. Because short of predicting rain or shine ten days ahead in the weather, you can’t — and even then, half the time the forecast is wrong anyway. There are too many variables at play: butterflies flapping their wings; neurons firing down a forked pathway; stardust from a distant supernova billions of years ago scattering randomly into the galaxy. A certain quantum indeterminacy to the universe. There’s no point in trying to predict the future. You can’t do it. And something about the words I love you has always felt like a promise you can’t be sure to keep, and a prediction you can’t be sure to make.
Tsukishima Kei is not in the business of predicting the future. But he doesn’t care to. As he pulls Tadashi into his chest and buries fingers in his soft hair, embraced by the sounds of the lake water lapping at shore, he’d rather this single moment here to last. Here in the now.
His heart sings along with the bullfrogs: alive now, now, now.