Chapter Text
Let's say it goes like this: Rin and Kiyoomi happen to be twins.
Things might have turned out differently if we were born in another family, Kiyoomi will say, years later. Maybe that's what luck is.
If their parents had been the sort of people who have family dinners every night, is what Kiyoomi means. If the two of them had been the sort of children that get called ‘polite’ and ‘well behaved’ rather than 'difficult' and 'obsessive', the sort that grow into adults leading ordinary, quiet lives.
If the two of them had never picked up a volleyball, and turned instead to tennis or the violin, is what Kiyoomi means: if they'd obsessed over drop shots and lobs rather than sharply angled spikes, perfecting a warm vibrato rather than the controlled spin of an impossible-to-return serve.
If they'd never become the volleyball monsters they both are, is what Kiyoomi means.
Being part of another family is like the literal definition of being 'different', Rin will respond with some asperity, but if you have to talk hypotheticals, then maybe we wouldn't be twins and I'd be blocking your weird-ass spikes on behalf of Inarizaki or Shiratorizawa.
Maybe things happening the way they did is what it means to be lucky, Kiyoomi will say, ignoring Rin, because any scenario without his twin’s existence is not one he cares to contemplate.
*
Let's say it goes like this:
Rin and Kiyoomi are twins. Rin is a half hour older: he has their father's sharp, clever eyes and messy hair; Kiyoomi has their mother's dark curls and dark stare. They both inherit their father's height and temperament, and their mother's hyperflexible joints.
Nobody knows where the cutting sense of humor comes from. Each twin blames the other.
The twins' presence in their family's lives isn't unwelcome, but it is unplanned. Their siblings are a decade older, college-bound before the twins begin elementary school. Their mother is a surgeon, preoccupied with saving lives; their father is a lawyer, preoccupied with policy and humanitarian efforts. Both are constantly, perpetually busy.
The apartment the twins grow up in is ostentatiously large, filled with designer furniture and empty space. Their earliest memories are of each other: Kiyo and Rin. It's enough because it has to be.
*
It goes like this, mostly:
The twins grow from quiet babies into quiet children. Neither talks as much as their teachers feel they should, and mostly only to each other.
Kiyoomi is too blunt for their peers, Rin too snide, and Rin sides with Kiyoomi always. Kiyoomi sees no point in suffering fools, and although Rin has no illusions about Kiyoomi, it's not a difficult choice: other children are dumb all the time, while Kiyoomi is dumb only part of the time.
When their teachers complain that Kiyoomi and Rin are too quiet, their parents are concerned, but not concerned enough to do something. Extraordinarily busy, the twins' parents do what most busy people do and defer the problem: the twins get passed to their aunt Rika, who in turn delegates them to her son Motoya.
It's Motoya because he's the Komori closest in age to Kiyoomi and Rin. Midori is four years older with no patience for younger children, and baby Sakiko is barely out of diapers.
It's volleyball because that's what Motoya signed up for the year before. He was more interested in baseball, but there wasn't space left in the club when he asked.
“Wanna play volleyball with me?" says Motoya, walking up tentatively to the twins one day after school.
Neither Rin nor Kiyoomi has any particular interest, but they go along with Motoya anyway because it's something to do.
In the end, it is that simple because both life and luck go like this sometimes: one moment into the next.