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Perched up on his mother’s shoulders, he feels as though he could touch the sun.
At four, Hinata knows no dangers of falling. How a body yields to fear, for mere humans were not made for the sky, but rather, for the land and their plains below. Instead, he raises both arms into the air, and splays his tiny fingers wide, as if trying to catch the tailend of a cloud, to gather into open palms.
His mother lets her voice dance in the tones of awe and wonder, and tells him how brave he is; how some would search for a fistful of a mother’s shirt, grip tight with whitening knuckles, as if the only lifeline. Together, they tilt their chins to the sky above and bound along the concrete path, kicking up gusts of their own making, and laughing into the summer air.
“Shouyou!” she calls out, curled hands a steady anchor around a pair of ankles, “Don’t you feel like you’re flying?”
At four, Hinata basks in this summit, looming higher than any skyscraper, and grins, far brighter than any sun.
At twelve, he tries to lift Natsu, his little sister, as if creating his own tradition, in hopes that she may taste the clouds.
A seat of shoulders swapped out for an armrest, Natsu latches on for dear life and scrabbles for purchase against his back. With shaky knees, Hinata tries not to buckle from the added weight, his footing stumbling across the floor. The buildings they greet are low rise, in the shape of doorway frames, barely reached with the tips of grazing fingers; and with a clumsy tilt of two bodies, they nearly collide with their dining room table, the corner, barely rounded. Between siblings, they keep a secret, of irresponsible brothers and nearly bumped heads, under the payment of pudding, transferred safely into Natsu’s waiting grasp.
At fifteen, he reaches another summit, that looms in the shape of a net and no means to reach it. With this mountain, he lingers at the base; for these are sights unknown, to eyes and hands and shoulders of a body, with wings yet to sprout. It towers above, jeering almost; and at its peak, a boy stands, donned with a crown to grace his head, #2 on his back, in the space between two wings.
At sixteen, that towering king falls into the space beside him, the squeak of their sneakers resounding. And together they go, to claw at the summit in fistfuls, and grapple with rocks until their hands scrub raw.
Now, at nineteen, Hinata grips onto a promise of 10,600 metres above ground, and all the sights it has to offer. With his suitcase checked in, he cashes in on another victory against Kageyama, in silly shapes of reaching Brazil first, and raises a fist to the airport’s sky, stitched closed.
“I’m going on ahead,” he says, in their particular brand of smugness, reserved only for the likes of victories over the other, no matter the form. Of the first to throw open the doors of the clubroom; the first to finish their ikayaki; the first to make it up this mountain .
And to the mock repeat of his own words from then, Kageyama grins in reply, another competition flitting into this line of vision.
In a seat too small, a plane too big, with each step taken further from home, Hinata’s hands thrum with a nervous energy. His shoes stay on, the backs weighted from hasty feet shoved in, after seesawing between deciding if Tsukishima’s words held a truth or a lie, when he had told him you have to take your shoes off upon boarding. And when the flight attendant approaches, asking if he needs help stowing away luggage overhead, he nearly flies out of his skin in surprise.
But those nerves, built from growing nightmares of turbulence and motion sickness, falls away; and Hinata presses his face against the window to marvel at how small the earth seems, when Narita Airport and Chiba and Japan, a land that spanned so wide, capturing his entire universe, whittles down into a pinprick.
When he lands in Brazil, he gathers himself, and toes at the ground as if testing new soils that he will run in. And to the sky, he raises a palm to shield from a cloudless ceiling, in his greeting to their sun here.
“The time limit is two years.”
To another set of ears, it sounds like another mountain. One that is encouraged to steer clear from, deterred away from even trying, with its towering height in things like halfway across the world. Look how high it is, they hear; look at how far you have to go.
But to Hinata, he hears another string of words. For in here, in his ears, in his mind, (and in another's) it’s yet another sight to see, another summit to conquer, and another court to build upon.
(In the face of others, they would scoff or be disheartened. But Kageyama does not bristle at these declarations either; for between them, they know, and share; that love for volleyball, and the hunger that can never be satisfied.)
When Hinata feels the impatience growing, when the sand saps the energy from his muscles, and nothing seems to land right, it rings in his ears as a reminder. And with it, he holds it in his fist, and returns to his feet once more.
In Brazil, Hinata keeps climbing.
He’s older now, a little wiser, and has learned to move a little gentler. For before, at eight, and twelve, and sixteen, he’d bounded forward, his steps like thunder, and his bones had groaned under the weight.
He sleeps the hours he should, reads the nutritional values of the back of food packaging; and standing at the kitchen counter, he scoops out his protein servings, with careful measure. He has learnt to listen; to his body, his bones; how aches in muscles speak - in a shout or a yell, to stop or to go or to yield to the warning.
For he knows now, the art of being healthy; and how these too, must fall into habits.
(Like nails, always trimmed. Volleyball journal, always close to hand.)
In bridges built from bricks shaped in the shared love for Mugiwara Pirates and Dragonball Z, he spends more time with Pedro, and with an excitement made to be shared, he shows Pedro his Zoro figurine, as if presenting his most precious treasure.
It was gifted to him from Kageyama, some time in their final year, as payment for a loss in a competition in scooping goldfish at a festival; and Hinata brought it with him, wedged into the corner of his suitcase, wrapped in a bubble wrap of mismatched socks and shirts, with sleeves too thick to survive in Brazil’s heat.
(And with this, Hinata thinks of Kageyama, dressed in a yukata, for Yachi had insisted that all of them wear one. Kageyama, and the way they went through all the stalls, a competition built from beneath their feet. Kageyama, under the fireworks, and the way their arms pressed together. Kageyama, and his awkward smile towards the camera; Kageyama, and his smile, unguarded, when he didn't realise that Hinata was looking.)
For the most part, he settles into these new rhythms; of work and home and volleyball, always waiting on the horizon. But sometimes, there are days where things fail to sit right.
Tonight, on an evening spent restless, Hinata leaps forward to feel the wind in his face, caught only at a speed on a time as muggy as balmy as this. And he goes into a sprint towards the open skies, cloudless, as if falling into step with another, a landmass and a world apart.
It’s only when he’s halfway down the plain that he allows himself to take notice; for now, he checks in, and realises the sting in his step. Past the stretch of the road, he pulls one shoe off, and sees then, how his sock comes away with red.
He had thought that his old shoes would last longer, bought over a fortnight before his flight and already comfortably broken into; but he’d burned through the soles far quicker than usual. As if relearning himself and his ways of moving; for he discovered new paths, and new ways to run, and worn down the rubber on his soles in new places.
So, in a shoe store he stood, a web page preloaded on his phone, detailing out all the different shoe size conversions, and he wandered around the store, and tried to match up the numbers. At the checkout, he nodded, his ears latching onto bits and pieces. He tried to link together the sounds to the words scrawled out on post-it notes that he’s pasted to his wall; his own knotting in his mouth.
Now, with too small shoes, he bounds down onto the shoreline, and feels the sand sink beneath the soles, and kicks them off into the sand. He ignores the impending doom that comes; of sand, stuck in the creases of shoes, how it can never be shaken off; sand, and the way they worm into fingers and toes and folds of shirts; sand, that latches onto blisters; both broken and not, with a sting that will burn all the way into his spine.
Shoes abandoned, he lets his feet lead him to the water; and when the waves welcome him and lap at his calves, his laughter comes sudden in a shout. Here, the waves do not nip at his heels and claw at his shins, but instead greet him, as if another friend.
To the moon above, he raises a hand in greeting, and captures it in his phone camera, and like an instinct, his thumb returns to Kageyama’s name, as if its own gravity that Hinata will always be drawn to. And with it, rises a feeling from the bottom of his stomach. But these are not butterflies that can be smothered, or silenced, but instead, a feeling that has come and never really gone; just lies muted until it rises to the surface, in its own ebb and flow.
On most days, Kageyama is a thought he returns to; and it’s always comforting somehow, even just seeing his name on the screen; knowing that they are both chasing their own planets on their own paths.
(And knowing, always, that they’ll come to meet again once more.)
Sometimes, their calls last barely five minutes. Other times, they roll into an hour, with phones left on the table (speakerphone, if Pedro isn’t home), as if having a meal together. A twelve hour time difference; in lunch here, dinner over there, and a table spread across an ocean, closing the gap.
(And fewer moments between, they call on a night left dreamless.
For on these nights, Hinata can lie back on his bed, and pretend that they’re seventeen all over again, and sprawled out on futons during a training camp; and along with the lull of sleep on either side, they settle into a comfortable quiet, one that others could be disbelieving of. They would speak entire universes in the silences between and an understanding that settled bone deep.)
This moon here, is the same as the one in Japan, the same as the one that Kageyama sprints beneath at night; backlit with the moonlight when he goes on his evening run. The same as when they stood, under the moon and stars and the gaze of the universe, as third years on the eve of their final Spring Tournament.
So attaching the photo into their chat, Hinata types out: look how bright!!!! the moon is!!!! before pocketing his phone, no answer expected. Not until later anyway, for Kageyama is a creature of habit, and Hinata has long since learnt his schedule.
For now, Kageyama will be on his morning run, will be picking another mountain trail to bound upon, will learn the earth beneath his feet.
Half a planet and an entire universe away, Hinata learns the sand beneath his own.
Kageyama’s reply comes in, far sooner than forecasted; almost as if he were expecting Hinata's message, with his own response readied before the initial call. Perhaps this is their own brand of telepathy, one on the court, built after they finally fell into step; and still strengthening now, even in different continents.
On the screen, Kageyama offers no words, no stickers; no questions in silence.
Instead, a photo of his own; of the sun and skies, a view of the mountain top in daylight.
(That night, Hinata sprawls out on his bed, and remembers.
A fifteen year old Hinata standing, dressed in Yukigaoka green, eyes red from crying. His first and last taste of Junior High Volleyball, cut short, barely half a toe in, his feet only skimming the surface.
Hinata standing out on the stone steps in his only means to tower; yearning for the court even with its unforgiving ways; the smell of air salonpas clinging to the air. His mouth full regret, of the net, of that one stolen point, feet meeting the end lines. Hinata, and a fire that spread, bloomed straight through his ribcage, so bright, and so hungry for more.
Hinata, and a sprint towards Kageyama, and a declaration heavy handed, thrown to their feet.
“I'll be the last one standing,” he had said, with a belief to swell his voice; for at fifteen, Hinata had known nothing of future paths, and how Kageyama would shift in his eyes.
Remembers-
Standing on the edge of graduation, and finding each other at the steps in Karasuno.
Halfway up, Kageyama was making his way up to meet his family. At the bottom, Hinata gazed up to him, chin tilted up, high enough to find level ground.
Here, Kageyama said, “I’m going on ahead.”
In return, Hinata nodded and grinned, a promise heavy in their eyes.)
(Remembers-
A sprint for the sun, across mountain paths and orange courts, land familiar beneath two sets of footprints that never strayed too far.
A bike holding two; wind in their faces, laughter hot in their lungs.
Pairs of hands coming together in high fives that linger, after service aces and match winning points and all the moments between; hands seeking the other's on walks home.
Two boys, the squeak of sneakers against gym floorings; a toss and spike, their sun passed in burning palms.)
For now, they move at their own pace and their own time zones, with one trailing half a day behind the other; as if shifting tempos, minus falling into second. But in another three years, Hinata will reach Kageyama in time for their takeoff, to bound up and pierce the skies.
Into step, they'll fall, for here, their wings stretch out before their flight; and they'll raise their palms, as if reaching for the sun in the sky.