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The first time Kita Shinsuke ever touched Miya Atsumu’s hands happened a few weeks before the Spring Inter-High of 2013, when they had been taking measurements and statistics for the team information sheet. They were listing down wingspans and height reach, and naturally for Inarizaki, it became a competition. The second years were jostling for top rank in whatever category their captain had on the list or required measurements, and again, naturally, it was Atsumu who hungered for more, and hungered to be more. He started comparing hand sizes, pressing his sweaty palms against those of the inky-haired boy with the clipboard.
“Kita-san, your hands are so small!” he exclaimed, lining up their wrists carefully, looking closely to ensure that their hands aligned properly, the pen in the captain’s hand dropping to the floor. Kita’s fingers came up a few centimeters short of Atsumu’s, engulfed almost completely in his teammate’s grip. It took the older boy a second to process the feel of rough palms against each other, shaking off the small blush that was starting to warm his cheeks.
“My hands are by no means small, you are simply bigger than most Japanese people,” Kita commented mildly, not taking his eyes away from the clipboard. “And you made me drop my pen with your unnecessary competition.” He held out his hand, fixing the setter with a disapproving look as Atsumu picked up the pen and gave it back to him, a sheepish grin on his face.
The Spring Inter-High had long come and gone since then, and now Kita was standing in front of his on-campus dormitory at the University of Osaka. High school seemed like distant memories, its sharp edges blurred and washed away by the college admissions rush, graduation, surviving in a new city alone, and perhaps, simply the passage of time. It was the second time Kita had seen the cherry blossoms cascade on the half-kilometre walkway leading back to his home of about two years now, and the memories seemed to come from completely different lifetime. Well, all of them except one.
*
The last time he saw sakura in full bloom in Hyogo was during his high school graduation. Kita was about to leave with his grandmother after the ceremony— and all the goodbyes— had finished, when Atsumu came running up to him at the school gate.
“Kita-san!”
The setter’s voice rang sharply above the quiet chatter in the yard, creating a hush for a few seconds as the students turned around to look at Atsumu. His ears were flushing a violent shade of red, a smattering of pink on his cheeks. Yet his eyes were, for once, meeting Kita’s on level, honey meeting chestnut, fiery passion meeting cool reserve. The spring breeze started to blow through the trees, shaking some petals off the sakura trees. A few of them settled in Atsumu’s hair and one landed on his cheek. Without thinking, Kita reached out and picked it off carefully, and it was then that he noticed that Atsumu was crying. One tear had rolled down and caught on the senior’s finger as he touched the petal.
Kita smiled at him as Atsumu attempted to talk, even as his voice distorted with a whirlwind of emotion. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped the setter’s tears away. It was then that Kita realised, beyond all doubt, that he loved the young man trying to form sentences in front of him, and that perhaps, it was too late to trouble him further.
He thought he saw Atsumu’s eyes flit to the second button of his blazer, and for a split second Kita wanted nothing more than to tear it off and press it into his hands. Instead, Kita pushed the damp handkerchief into them, closing the young man’s long fingers around it.
“Kita-san…” Atsumu sniffled. “Thank you… I’ll return this to you when we meet next time.”
“No worries,” Kita replied gently. Looking up at the sakura around them, he said, “It is still kaika. They have only started to bud, and have much left to bloom, but I am sure that mankai will be beautiful.”
Meeting gazes with the crying blonde once more, he said, “Your time is precious, Atsumu.” He clasped both of Atsumu’s hands in his, gripping them gently. “I know you will make the best of you from here, and I will always be proud of you, wherever life will find you.”
“Yes!” Atsumu managed to eke out, and Kita let his gaze linger on him for a bit longer. There were things that were better left unsaid. Atsumu was a beloved monster, a shining star, one he could admire, maybe love, from afar.
“Kita-san, I like you a lot,” he heard Atsumu say in his heart, and maybe in his dreams—
Hold on.
“What did you say…?” Kita asked, his voice hushed, and unusually gentle.
“I like you a lot, Kita-san. In that way,” Atsumu said, wiping the last of his tears, the determination back in his gaze.
The disbelief was probably evident in Kita’s eyes, because Atsumu stammered, his accent getting thicker with each word, “Y-ya don’t need to reject or to accept my feelings right now, if ya don’t think you can give me an answer. I just want ya to know that I have feelings for ya ‘cause I want to be honest, with you, and with myself, for once.” He looked at anywhere but Kita now, his ears now shiny and tomato-coloured.
Kita could feel the tears pooling in his eyes now. He tried in vain to wipe them away with the back of his sleeve, as he struggled in vain to piece words together.
It was Atsumu’s turn to wipe his tears away. The “Please think about it from here on out, Kita-san. I want to do it properly, this time. If you feel we’re after the same happily ever after, then give me a chance. Please.”
Kita wordlessly nodded, and Atsumu gave him a deep bow. As they parted ways, Kita really wondered if time would be kind to him and fade away Atsumu’s memories of his second-year volleyball captain.
*
The Inarizaki Volleyball Club group chat had remained quite dormant lately, and Kita had noticed that despite Atsumu and Suna’s daily updates, the chat had been pushed down towards the bottom of Kita’s LINE list, overtaken by group study, university class chats, and new friends. However, Atsumu’s private chat had always seemed to stay near the top of the list. The messages he sent ranged from questions about uni and life choices, to almost-daily photos of a fat Shiba Inu that would poke its face out of a gap in the wall of a house that Atsumu would pass by on the way to school. Kita would make a small comment or an emoji reaction, that would grow into a short conversation.
Recently, though, even those updates were starting to become few and far in between, and Kita feared that the inevitable had now come. Had he become a memory to Atsumu, one that he didn’t need? The thought triggered an ache in the pit of his chest, even as he tried to catch up with the conversation at the uni lunch table.
Kita didn’t have classes in the afternoon that day, so he decided to make his way back to the dorms to study. There was no real reason to cry about something that he hasn’t confirmed yet, reason would dictate, and yet the ache in Kita’s chest was getting hard to ignore. Maybe he needed to rest.
His train of thought was broken by his vibrating phone, and seeing that it was his grandmother, picked up the call.
“Hey Gran. How are you?” Kita said, the weight on his chest seeming to lighten.
“Shinsuke, are you home now?” Kita Yumie’s voice crackled through the line.
“You know, I swear you’re psychic,” Kita joked. “I am on my way back to my flat right now. What’s up? Are you okay?”
“Oh I’m fine! You know I cannot rest until I see you settled with a family of your own,” she joked back, earning an inward groan from her grandson. “You’re on your way back there from class? Good, good. I had some goodies from Hyogo delivered to you, and they should be arriving today, so you better be ready to receive them.”
Kita’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “A care package from home, huh?”
“You could say that,” Yumie chuckled, a teasing lilt in her voice. “Well, I won’t keep you long since the delivery might already be at your door, but let me know what you think, and if you like it! I love you, Shinsuke. Take care over there, okay?”
“Yes Gran. Please take care of yourself well until I come home,” Kita said, his eyes moist. “Thank you and I love you. Talk to you later.”
He changed his plans to buy food from the Famima on the way to the dormitory and walked briskly home. The Somei Yoshino sakura trees waved at him as he passed by, their boughs heavy with the blush hues of the blossoms that made them famous all over the world.
Upon reaching the dorm lobby, he asked the resident assistant if any packages had come for him, but it earned him a strange look and a shake of the head. Oh good, he thought. At least the delivery man won’t be kept waiting.
He had barely hung his keys on their appointed hook when the doorbell rang. Pressing the call button, he heard the RA’s sleepy voice on the other end.
“The delivery is here, Kita-san,” he droned. “I’ll send him upstairs.”
“Oh no need, I’ll go down to receive it.”
“It’s fine, i already sent him up,” the RA replied. “Just sit tight and wait for him at the door.”
Sure enough, there was a knock on the door, and a muffled call for “Kita Shinsuke-san” beyond it. Kita put on his outside slippers in the genkan and opened the door.
He was facing away from the door, but Kita would know that back anywhere he was in the world. He had definitely grown a few centimetres taller, and his hair was a lighter shade of blond, cut a bit shorter and stylishly tousled. As he turned around, though, it was again all familiar yet new. Honey meeting chestnut, but thinly-veiled joy meeting surprise.
“Atsumu.”
“Kita-san.”
Atsumu’s eyes crinkled as he gazed once more into Kita’s eyes, a large box marked “Kita Farm” in his arms. The university student blinked a few times at him.
“What… what are you doing here?” Kita asked, his eyes searching Atsumu’s face for any sign that he wasn’t dreaming.
“I told Gran that I was moving to Osaka, and she told me to deliver some things for you,” Atsumu began, “and well… I wanted to see you. I wanted to let you know I was here, close to you.”
“Close to me…?”
“Well, Coach Kurosu said that I’d get a better chance at the draft if I played a university varsity team first, and so I studied hard, so hard that I ended up making the honours list in third year,” Atsumu continued, blushing at the ears once more. “I wanted to get into a good university… and one that had you in it, I guess.”
Kita remained quiet, so Atsumu took that as a cue to continue. “I’m here on a partial athletic scholarship too.”
“Is this what you want, Atsumu?” Kita finally asked.
Atsumu paused. “I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do after high school, but I always kept coming back to the same two things I liked: volleyball… and you,” he said, meeting Kita’s gaze. “This is not happily ever after yet, I am aware. But I will work hard towards that ever after, pursuing my dreams, together with you. Any ever after, anywhere, playing volleyball and being with you, is the best of myself that I could ever be.”
He placed the box on the floor, and caught Kita’s hands in his, matching up wrists and fingers. “Your hands are a little bigger now,” Atsumu observed, gently grasping at Kita’s fingers. “They’re warmer, too.”
Kita gripped Atsumu’s hands and placed them on the small of his back, pressing his face into the crook of his shoulder. Atsumu could feel Kita’s face, warm in his shirt, the tears seeping through the fabric as he murmured something.
“Hm?” Atsumu asked.
“... I love you, too,” Kita said, lifting his head from Atsumu’s shoulder, his face tear-streaked and happy.
“I love you, Kita-san,” Atsumu said, gently placing his lips on Kita’s forehead. “Let me in, so we can get this package delivered?”
Kita grinned, taking Atsumu’s hand as they brought the box in together. It might feel like the road led to the unknown from here on end, but as he held on to the hand of his love, the spring in their hearts would bloom in mankai through the seasons of their lives.
***