Archive of Our Own ^beta

The coach of the volleyball team handed out some bags filled with unknown stuff inside to each player. It seemed some were quite heavier than others. The two managers were slightly confused until their club adviser approached them. 

“Don’t think we forgot about you two.” He proceeded to hand each of them a bag with a smile on his face.

And now they’re even more confused.

Ukai gestured for all of them to open up their respective bags and enjoy. Each member’s eyes sparkled when they saw what was inside. Their favorite snacks, food, whatever you wish to call edible things.

A collective swarm of happiness filled the court they practiced in. When they settled down a bit, all crows thanked the two adults with a bow.

“All of you have given your all for our previous practices, and we thought your hard work deserved something,” said Takeda as he showed a grin.

“Specs, you’ve also been working hard lately.” Ukai took out another bag he had and gave it to the man beside him.

“Is this?” he asked.

Ukai nodded then Takeda opened the bag, and once he saw what was inside, his own eyes started to sparkle. 

“Enjoy! I’ll give you all some time to eat, then we’ll clean up the gym later on.” The coach grabbed his own bag which earned some looks from others. “What? I’ve also been working hard lately,” he shrugged. 

The big group in the middle of the court dispersed into smaller ones, some favored to stay near walls, while others couldn’t be bothered to wait any longer and just sat down to eat their food in the middle of the court. Hinata was one of the latter.

He lifted the sides of the bag apart and took out a paper bowl with a pair of chopsticks inside. Opening up the lid of the bowl revealed a steaming mountain of tamago kake gohan (steamed rice mixed with soy sauce and raw egg). Saliva was dripping out of his mouth as he smelled the delicious scent of it.

But he didn’t have time to admire the looks or smell of this, no. He did however, have time to admire the taste of it. Hinata immediately scarfed down the rice—though his mouth burned from the heat of the meal—within seconds until he was left with nothing except an empty bowl and a pair of chopsticks in his hands. 

What? All gone already? he thought. 

The middle blocker looked around and saw that some of his friends haven’t even sat down to enjoy their food yet. Not knowing what to do now, he decided to just go over to sit down with one of the groups, or in this case, person, since the person he decided to approach was Kageyama. Well, less of approach and more of being dragged by the scent of what Kageyama had in his bowl.

From what the orange-haired boy saw (and smelled), Kageyama had some kind of curry on top of a steaming pile of rice. Additionally, on the floor by his side was a small carton of milk.

“Hey! Kageyama, what do you got over there?” he asked.

“It’s pork curry with an egg on top...” He was about to take a bite from his meal, but he saw that his teammate didn’t leave. “Are you just gonna watch me eat?”

“Can I have some of your food?”

“No.”

Hinata shot the setter a look then proceeded to take out the chopsticks and bowl he previously used to eat his meal and started trying to nab a piece of pork or at least the egg from Kageyama’s curry. In turn, the latter began fighting off the former with his feet—since his arms are occupied with trying to keep his food as far away from Hinata as possible.

Eventually, Kageyama got himself enough room away from his assailant to practically inhale his food, leaving the bowl empty in seconds, much like what Hinata did to his meal earlier.

“C’mon, you couldn’t even spare me one piece?” asked the middle blocker.

Kageyama took his milk carton in his hands and started sipping from it. “Well, it’s my food, and I can do what I want with it.”

“Sharing is caring, dammit!”

The two once again got into a mini brawl with each other. Meanwhile, on another side of the gym, another duo is watching and snickering at the fight the previous two are currently having. 

“They’re going to get a stomachache in three... two... one...”

And on cue, Hinata and Kageyama stopped their meddling to grab on to their stomachs and whimper a bit. 

“How’d you predict that?” Yamaguchi asked.

“They just finished eating, not to mention that they ate their food so quickly. It was practically inevitable,” answered Tsukishima.

“Well, you’re not wrong.”

“How the hell did they know I like strawberry shortcakes?” Tsukishima questioned as he took out the delicate dessert from its container.

“Remember that one time when coach forgot to show up, and Daichi just decided to make us tell stuff about ourselves?”

“Ah, right. That was a waste of time, honestly.”

“Maybe it is, but we wouldn’t get this free food without it. We might as well enjoy it.” Yamaguchi giggled a bit and began to fish out his food, which was a box of french fries. Though, Yamaguchi favored the soft and floppy ones rather than the crunchy fries.

The pinch server grabbed one of the floppy potatoes and started flicking it around a bit.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to play with your food?” Tsukishima asked as he took a bite out of his shortcake.

Yamaguchi continued to flick the french fry around. “Yeah, but have you noticed these french fries are just like you?” 

The middle blocker let on a questioning look at his friend.

“Well...” Yamaguchi began, “first of all, french fries are yellow like your hair. Second, some can be really long just as how you’re really tall, and they’re salty just like how you can be sometimes.”

“Cool—wait. What was that last part?”

Yamaguchi realized he messed up, and with a sweat drop sliding down the side of his face, he started looking around for a way to change the topic. 

Fortunately, luck was on his side as a distraction came just his way.

“Why is this bag empty! Where’s my food? I’ve been scammed!” shouted a voice from the middle of the court.

Yamaguchi and Tsukishima’s attention immediately went to said voice, and their previous conversation has been forgotten. 

The pinch server let out a sigh of relief, while his friend watched the impending chaos in front of them.

————————————————————————————————————

“I’ve been scammed!” shouted Nishinoya while he stomped around in a tantrum.

“Hey! Keep it down!” shouted back their angry coach.

“Sir, where’s my food?!”

“Oh my god. Will you please take the time to walk five seconds closer to our coach, so the both of you can have a normal conversation without such loud shouting?” Ennoshita said, clearly annoyed by his fellow second-year’s noise.

“Oh, I forgot it’s at the freezer in the school’s faculty! I’ll go get it!” Takeda shouted out before leaving the court.

Please no more shouting. My ear drums are about to bleed. 

With nothing more to do besides wait for Takeda to bring back his precious Gari-Gari Kun (soda flavored!) popsicles,  Nishinoya sat down, watching his friends enjoy their food. 

“Don’t you get tired of eating the same thing, though?” Kinoshita asked. “Like you literally buy one every time we all walk home together after school.”

The shortest second-year sprang up to defend his popsicles. 

“Noya, recieve!” Narita called out, as he threw a small portion of one of his tamagoyaki (sushi omelette) towards him.

The libero was surprised at a random piece of food flying towards him, but food is food after all. Most people’s reflexes would’ve failed on them, and just had an egg flying into their face, but Nishinoya’s reflexes weren’t like others. 

He caught the small piece of tamagoyaki flawlessly—though some pieces of rice fell to the floor—using his mouth.

“Hey, that tastes pretty good.”

“Maybe now you can actually start having other kinds of after-school snacks that don’t give you brain freezes from you eating too fast,” said Ennoshita, though his attention was on his food.

The libero sat in front of the former with a smile on his face.

“I’m not giving you my food.”

“What happened to,” Nishinoya started to mimic Ennoshita, “eat other stuff, blah blah.”

“You shouldn’t have done that. Now he’s mad,” said Tanaka.

Instead of being mad, Ennoshita seemed more annoyed than anything. “One, I don’t sound like that. And two, I highly doubt you’ll like my food.”

“Bet.”

Ennoshita took a piece of the food he ate along with some rice and placed it on Nishinoya’s outstretched hand. The latter took it in and ate it.

After a few seconds, he stopped chewing and his face scrunched up.

“You look like a grandpa with all those wrinkles,” said Narita with a giggle.

“Bro, you good?”

Ennoshita’s face had nothing more written on it than victory before he went back to eating. “Told you that you wouldn’t like it.”

Nishinoya finally managed to swallow the questionable food. “The heck did I put in my mouth?”

“It’s called sea pineapple.”

“I thought pineapples were sweet.”

“First of all, it’s vinegared sea pineapple, so that explains the vinegary taste. Second, it’s not a plant.”

Unable to believe his fellow second-year, Nishinoya took out his phone and started typing to search a picture of a sea pineapple. Once he found one, he shoved the phone in front of Ennoshita while chanting, “I told you so”.

“It’s an animal, dimwit. Just because it looks like a plant and is named after one, doesn’t mean it is one. How hard is it to understand? You didn’t even read a description of it.”

Nishinoya scrolled through his phone and found a description of the sea pineapple. After reading a bit, Ennoshita saw the look on the libero’s face that realized his mistake and once more shot a look of victory.

“Why would they call it a pineapple then?” Tanaka asked.

“Can we not go through all that again?” brought up Kinoshita.

“Hey, Kinoshita! What do you got there?” Nishinoya asked.

“Pickled ginger, but seeing as how you didn’t like the water apple—“

“It’s sea pineapple,” corrected Ennoshita.

The pinch server looked at Ennoshita with confusion. “It’s a joke... Anyways, as I was saying, you probably wouldn’t like it too much, ‘cause y’know, it’s literally vinegary ginger I eat with rice. You didn’t seem to like the water apple much,” he lowered his voice for the next part. “Plus, I don’t want to share.”

“Cool. Bro, what about you?” 

“Oh, I already ate all my food. You said you didn’t want any,” Tanaka said while he ate some of the remaining crumbs.

“But melonpan tastes great!”

“You said you didn’t want any!”

“I never said I didn’t want any!”

“Isn’t melonpan just a piece of bread that looks like a melon?” Narita asked.

“Well, yeah, but the look makes it taste better,” both Nishinoya and Tanaka replied.

Everyone else in the group just stared at them in confusion.

Suddenly, the main door of the gym opened up, and Takeda rushed towards Nishinoya.

“Sorry for the wait,” he said with heavy breaths from running. “I forgot where I placed it in the freezer.” He handed the libero his favorite popsicle and went back to the table where he and Ukai were.

Ennoshita took in a sigh of relief, “Great, now you’ll eat that thing, and we can all have a quiet—“

“Done!” exclaimed Nishinoya while nibbling on the stick that held the popsicle in place.

“Of course you’re done...”

“At least it’s not like that one time you ate ice cream off the floor after it fell again,” Tanaka blurted out.

“Floor ice cream gives you health!” Nishinoya debated.

Meanwhile, Takeda slumped back on one of the chairs, still tired. 

Ukai laughed at the club advisor, “maybe you should start training with the boys.”

Takeda, however, ignored the coach to get back to eating. He opened the container of his Nikujaga (meat, potatoes, and onion stewed in sweetened soy sauce and mirin) with rice, but noticed something off.

He turned to Ukai, “Did one of the boys take a piece of meat?”

“Of course not. Why are you even asking?” the coach replied back.

“There’s only two pieces of meat left, but I remembered that I specifically left three before taking off to get Nishinoya’s popsicle.”

Ukai’s eyes widened. “You don’t say, huh?”

Takeda took notice of the coach’s expressions. “Ukai...” he began, “did you eat my food?”

“N-no.”

“Oh my god, Ukai—“

“I’m sorry! It smelled good!” He threw his hands up in the air.

Takeda pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’re adults, we’re meant to act professional in front of the students.”

Ukai apologized once more to his coworker and tried to think of a way to make it up to him. In his train of thoughts, his attention was drawn to his own food, Konyakku Dumplings.

“Here, you can have one of my dumplings. Think of it as payment for the meat.”

The adviser, although weary at first, ate the food that was offered to him.

“Hey, that tastes pretty good. Can I have another?”

“In your dreams, Specs.”

The adviser leaned nearer to the coach while gesturing to his food, “I’ll give you another piece of meat if I can have one dumpling.”

The coach scoffed at the deal given, “What happened to ‘we must act professional’?”

“Do you want the food or not?” said Takeda, deadpan.

Ukai shook the adviser’s hand in a professional-like fashion. “You got yourself a deal, good sir.”

The two exchanged pieces of food and continued to eat their meals with newfound smiles on their faces.

————————————————————————————————————

Sugawara was watching his coach and club adviser during their whole conversation from another side of the court. He was seated with both Daichi and Asahi beside him, who were both doing something similar as the former two mentioned, in which they were trading some of their own food for the other’s.

They would always do this thing where they mix a bit of the broth from each other’s ramen in another bowl to make a “super broth” in their words. Asahi had tonkotsu ramen (pork-based broth), while Daichi had shoyu ramen (soy sauce-based broth). After they were done making their separate servings of “super broth”, they would eat it with their noodles afterwards.

Sugawara was always left behind whenever they do this, since well, his favorite food was super spicy mapo tofu, something the other two aren’t really into.

But that’s gonna change today, heheh, he thought with a sly grin on his face.

He turned to his friends, “Hey, Daichi, Asahi. How about you two try my super spicy—“ 

“I’m gonna stop you right there, Suga,” Daichi said. “You know that we aren’t too fond of spicy foods.”

“Not to mention that your tofu is super spicy,” added Asahi.

“You guys sound like babies,” said Sugawara as he crossed his arms.

“Is that a challenge?” Daichi asked.

There we go. Now things are going to get interesting, the setter thought.

Daichi tapped Asahi, who was slurping away on their super broth, to get his attention. “Dude, this guy thinks we can’t handle spice.”

“I-I mean we really can’t—“

Asahi was cut off when he saw Sugawara taunting him with a crying gesture while mouthing out “baby” over and over.

“Alright, I accept that challenge,” the spiker said.

Sugawara gave both of his friends each a piece of tofu that was completely slathered with the sauce that makes it so spicy. 

Daichi decided to smell the tofu before tasting it to know exactly what he was getting himself into. The smell itself made him tear up a bit, and his nose to become a bit runny. Asahi looked at his friend then back to the tofu with a weary look. 

“What’s up with you guys? It’s just tofu,” Sugawara said. His sly face indicated that he only said this to poke fun at his friends some more.

Daichi and Asahi looked at each other, nodded, then ate the tofu given to them in one bite. At first, nothing seemed to go wrong, but that all changed when the spice started to set in. 

Daichi felt like his whole face was on fire. Tears were coming out of his eyes, snot was dripping down his nose, and sweat was dripping down the side of his face. Muffled screams of pain were heard from him. He was also fanning himself with his hands as if that would help save him now.

Asahi on the other hand, swallowed the tofu as soon as he could, but that didn’t prevent the spiciness to linger. He basically looked like Daichi right now, except he wasn’t fanning himself and instead is biting his shirt to try wiping the spice away from his mouth. It didn’t work either.

As all this was transpiring, Sugawara was laughing on the ground at his friends and took another big bite of the tofu just to jab at them even more. “Alright, alright. You guys can drink water now.”

Sugawara had barely finished that sentence, when the other two third-years got up and started running to their water jugs like their life depended on it. 

The rest of the club stared at them drinking water and putting out the fires in their mouths.

“Screw you, Suga!” both of them shouted before resuming to drink water.

“Are they okay?!” Yachi asked with panic in her voice as she watched the third-years. She was about to get up to help them before her friend stopped her.

“Yeah, they’re fine. They do weird stuff like this ever since we were all first-years,” answered Kiyoko.

“They don’t look too fine to me.”

“Eventually, you’re going to be seeing the other first-years doing weird things like this,” the elder manager said as she took a bite out of her tenmusu (prawn tempura onigiri).

“Oh, don’t worry! I believe that they won’t—“

She was cut off by Kageyama and Hinata fighting on the other side of the court once again after their stomach pains have finally went away.

“Yeah. Never mind. I see your point...”

Kiyoko let out a quiet giggle. “Told you so.”

“The thing is, I’m shorter than all of them. How am I going to deal with them soon when they’re all giants. I’m not as energetic as Hinata, or as bold as Noya. They make up for their heights by being tall in those categories.”

“Well, I can’t really answer you now, Yachi,” she paused as she saw the younger manager’s face turn somber. “But you’re creative, you’ll find a way. I know you will.”

That frown was now upside down, but another thing wasn’t as satisfied. A low grumble was heard between the two of them.

Shimizu grabbed her stomach. “Sorry. I’m still hungry, and there’s no tenmusu left for me to eat. I’ll just grab something else later when we’re on our way home.”

Yachi started digging around in her bag. She took out a bar of fugashi (long strips of dough which are baked then covered in brown sugar) and handed it to her friend.

“Hold on. Didn’t you already eat two of these earlier while we were talking?” Kiyoko asked.

“Coach actually bought me about five, considering they’re pretty cheap compared to the other things you guys have.”

“Well, uh...” She got a sudden realization and made a smile similar to the one Sugawara had earlier. “Well, Yachi. You should keep it, after all, a growing girl needs all the food she can get.”

Hitoka let out a big gasp, “Was that a short joke?!” 

Kiyoko started laughing at the younger manager’s reactions. Yachi, however, didn’t take the joke too lightly. She started mumbling out loud and in short breaths that she should have never taken the role of being their manager..? (It was quite hard to understand what exactly she was mumbling about, due to it all happening too fast.)

“Yachi!”

The former immediately stopped to turn to her friend.

Kiyoko sighed, “If there really is one thing I can tell you to learn right now, it’s that you shouldn’t keep being so paranoid about everything. Some things, like the joke a while ago, aren’t meant to make you feel self-conscious. Though, I probably shouldn’t have gone so far.”

“No, no! You’re right. I knew it was a joke, yet I still took it in the worst possible way,” she argued while rubbing the back of her head.

Another grumble from Kiyoko’s stomach was heard. 

“Seriously, though. You can have this.” Yachi once more offered her fugashi.

The elder manager thanked her for the small snack, and the two got back to talking about different topics.

Eventually, the whole club finished their food, then cleaned and locked up the gym. Everyone finished off this day’s practice with full tummies and smiles on their faces. Despite the events that had gone down earlier, it was just another day in Karasuno High’s gym. And for them, they wouldn’t change it at all.