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In his second year of high school, Miya Atsumu only very narrowly dodged a failing mark in statistics. Knowing this, he holds no illusions about his own expertise (or the distinct lack thereof) when it comes to census data science.

On the sixth official day of Olympic training, though, Atsumu perseveres through his statistical shortcomings, and decides that the demographic composition of the 2021 Japanese men's national volleyball team must roughly be:

1. Hinata Shouyou;
2. People who played alongside/against Hinata Shouyou in a cinematic, high-stakes, formative experience of their high school volleyball careers that has continued to stick with them for many years to follow;
3. People who—sucks to suck!—never did have the luxury of playing alongside/against Hinata Shouyou in a cinematic, high-stakes, formative experience of their high school volleyball careers. These are the people who will probably spend the rest of their careers alternately lamenting their lackluster high school career and rejoicing that fate has finally brought them together as Olympian teammates.

(The team could probably also be said to consist of 1. sore losers, 2. sore winners, 3. one Miya Atsumu, happily taking residence in the intersection of that Venn diagram, and 4. benevolent, serene, stoic Ushijima Wakatoshi. Whatever. It's all water under the bridge. Or something. It's serendipity, Bokuto might recite dutifully, from one of the weekly vocabulary enrichment lists he gets on his phone.)

From his chosen corner of the linoleum floor, Atsumu narrows his eyes with suspicion and levels a stare across the gym, to where all 204 looming centimetres of Hyakuzawa Yuudai are listening to the steady stream of Hinata's chatter with complete earnest attentiveness. Kind of like an exceptionally large, exceptionally well-behaved kindergartener.

"How do they know each other again?" Atsumu wonders aloud, not without a hint of sour petulance.

Sakusa sends him a scathing glare that's somehow both utterly disinterested and immensely disgusted, like he thinks Atsumu is a stupid, nosy, and presumptuous asshole. Obviously, says Sakusa's glare, obviously it's because Hinata had played against the Warriors for two seasons, just like the rest of MSBY. I was there. You were there. The powers that be were all there.

Atsumu is, certainly, a nosy, presumptuous asshole, though he at least likes to maintain that he isn't stupid. For all of their sakes, benevolent serene stoic Ushijima steps in to answer his original question before Atsumu can summon up the brain and willpower to start arguing with Sakusa in earnest.

"In my third year and their first, Shiratorizawa was host to a training camp intended for promising Miyagi prefecture first-years. Both Hyakuzawa and Hinata were in attendance."

Yaku snorts, moving to push his bangs back from his forehead. There's enough product in it that the clump of hair is already entirely frozen in place, which means that it's an essentially meaningless action. Trust Atsumu; he would know. "Were all of you just holding hands and writing friendship songs up in the Miyagi high school circuit, or what?"

"It was a volleyball-intensive training camp like any other," Ushijima informs him very seriously. "I was not a participant, as I was not a first-year. Neither was Hinata, as he—"

Wait. A record scratches somewhere in Atsumu's brain. "Hold up, what d'you mean Shouyou-kun wasn't there?"

And, aha—? Something shifts in Ushijima's expression when he launches into a patient account of little first-year Hinata's impromptu stint as Shiratorizawa's humble and diligent ball boy. Even as he reports on it with a solemn gravitas Atsumu thinks might be more fitting as a speech at somebody's commencement, he can recognize the faint tug of amusement at Ushijima's lips as a distinct expression of fondness. 

And isn't that just the spirit of the Hinata Shouyou-induced cinematic, high-stakes, formative high school volleyball experience that runs rampant in the Japanese professional volleyball scene? Atsumu thinks semi-miserably. 

Hinata's two-season stint with the MSBY Black Jackals was punctuated frequently with post-game reunions of friends and family, former teammates and opponents, admirers on and off the court alike—all running up to greet him after matches, no matter where they were in the country. Atsumu is no stranger to fame—or infamy—but the status of Ninja Shouyou as some type of international urban legend is unparalleled by the likes of his own high school cheerleader club, Sakusa's lethal legion of online warriors, or even Bokuto's nationwide support network that consists, by a shockingly overwhelming majority, of passionately devoted mothers. 

The thing is, he gets it. The way Hinata dashes around the court in a way that makes Atsumu's fingers just itch for the curvature of a volleyball, the magnetic pull of inspiration with just a flash of his smile. Sometimes, Atsumu thinks that Hinata would do just well as some kind of global ambassador of kindness, self-help and overall greater good of humanity as he would a professional volleyball player.

If Atsumu was a better person, he might take the occasion to laugh good-naturedly at the antics of a mutual friend—well, that's just Shouyou-kun for ya, always running in and makin' a spectacle of himself, ain't that right?—clap Ushijima on his back (Atsumu might add: truly mountainous, even by Olympian standards), hit the showers, and head along home.

In reality: Atsumu is, through self admission and popular vote, an asshole whose first instinct does not in any way line up with that particular sequence of events. He is also, however, an incredibly seasoned bullshitter, so he laughs, claps Ushijima on his back, irritates Yaku into staying behind and receiving his serves, and resolutely does not think about Hyakuzawa Yuudai's Hinata-induced cinematic, high-stakes, formative experiences. Or anyone else's, for that matter.

In an effort to distract him from his serve, Yaku swears at him from across the net loudly and in increasingly incomprehensible ways. Hinata laughs, inaudible from the distance, at something Hakuba is now saying to him. Atsumu's gaze follows them until they finally disappear from the main gym area, like he's compelled by some magnetic force invisible to the eye.

Serendipity, Bokkun. That's right.

±

Atsumu's particular cinematic, high-stakes, formative experiences of high school volleyball: 

• A plea masquerading as a declaration of war, separated by the width of the net and the exhaustion of a game well-played. By most non-Atsumu accounts, though, this ranges from a pathetic display of Loserness and Loserity (Osamu) to a weird, disgusting courtship ritual (Suna) to a maybe-tolerably-passable-I-guess attempt at a cool one-liner (Aran and Ginjima).
• A chance for redemption, one year down the line. The white Inarizaki alternate jerseys. The black of Karasuno's regular uniform brightening against the contrasting orange detail, until it appeared instead almost to be an impossibly deep shade of blue. Atsumu, the eighteen-year-old captain of Inarizaki looking to prove a point.

It's true, obviously, that Atsumu usually already lived like he had a great deal of points to prove to every person he would ever meet throughout the course of his entire life. It's also true that his high school melodramatic streak was unparalleled even by his adult melodramatic streak, but when Aran and Kita had both messaged saying they could make it down to Osaka to watch them play—on Hell Day, no less—it was like someone had dumped gasoline on the metaphorical fire that had already been lit under Atsumu's ass.

Legs bouncing up and down in an attempt to offset the twisting sensation in the pits of his stomach before they were due for on-court warm-ups, Atsumu felt like he was soon about to vibrate out of himself and shed out of his mortal coil like reptile skin. Suna side-eyed him with a vague, lazy distaste, legs stretched out in a freaky middle split. 

"What," said Atsumu flatly.

Suna only lightly indicated his head in the direction of their high-strung huddle of rookies, where nervous energy was practically emanating from them in visible waves. "You should probably say something inspiring for the first-years, before they straight-up self-destruct. Captain." 

"Probably," Atsumu acknowledged with a grunt, ignoring the jeering emphasis Suna still liked to put on the title Captain every time he addressed Atsumu as such. Suna was smiling in a vaguely smug way that Atsumu always thought kind of made him seem like a serial killer, which was how he knew Suna was letting the nerves get to him as well.

"Say," he prodded at Suna, vaguely conspiratorially. "We've sure been waitin' for this one, haven't we, Sunarin."

Instead of a response, Suna only rolled his eyes before burying his head into the floor to further the stretch. After a few more moments, Atsumu peeled himself off the floor, wiping his palms on the side of his shorts before clearing his throat and calling the scattered team to gather around in a huddle before they were due out on the court.

The fateful rematch began, as it had last time, with Atsumu raising his fist in the air for silence on his serve. For most games it usually took a few rallies to get into the swing of things, but the re-upped Karasuno immediately unfolded their latent aggression like a set of wings, with all the rapid immediacy of the voracious crows they represented.

Their mild-looking captain who had been benched until recently, a stabilizing centre to Karasuno's frenetic energy in a way that made Atsumu itch to search for a head of black-tipped silver in the stands. Kageyama Tobio, seemingly having transformed last year's monstrosity into prosaic, quotidian nature. All the blinding fluorescence of the gym lights that appeared to converge, wholeheartedly supporting Hinata Shouyou in the air as he slammed home Karasuno's first point.

Even as the rhythmic thump of Karasuno's taiko drums continuously worked to drown out Inarizaki's ensemble, Atsumu could only think, once again: so fuckin' cool.

"Time to get to work, 'Samu," he called out across the court. When Osamu turned it was only to direct a scowl at him, but the wrinkles on the back of his #2 jersey straightened considerably with his posture by the time the whistle blew to signal Kageyama's serve.

After all, not a single one of them were to be left behind this time. All the hours watching and rewinding the tournament tapes, the extra time spent lingering in the gym with numbingly gruelling drills—all of it had been fully absorbed as performance, so that it was Inarizaki who emerged from the vicious crossfire, ultimately victorious.

The greatest challengers, everyone! he heard the excited commentators shout through the rush of blood in his ears. 

Ha! thought Atsumu as he hip-checked Osamu, near-delirious on victory. Behind him, the banner bearing Inarizaki's motto shook with the roar of the crowd and the quiet beams of his predecessors. 

When it was time to line up across the court to bow and shake hands, thank each other for a match well-played, Atsumu found himself soaking up every mundane trace of evidence. The vaulted ceilings of the gymnasium that suddenly appeared to be a vast expanse of sky and open light. Aran and Kita in the stands, still smiling, forever underpinned by the backdrop of their motto and banner. The orange accents of Karasuno's regular uniform contrasted starkly with the dark fabric.

Hinata, who wore his hair a bit longer than he had in Atsumu's memory, who seemed to be handling the loss with a sort of grace Atsumu wouldn't have assumed of him last year. That buzzing need, that glowing anticipation, that desperation just to be granted the right of one more spike, one second longer on the court. 

But then again, thought Atsumu, recalling the image of him burning up with fever and escorted off the court, there were some fires that just weren't sustainable.

There was no remnant of that crumbling defeat from last year in Hinata's eyes now. Not when he helped their little blonde manager pass out water bottles after taking a swig of his own. Not when he bounded up to his exhausted teammates to press towels into their tired hands. Especially not as he took Atsumu's hand in his own when the teams lined up at the net, squeezing it with firm conviction.

"Atsumu-san," said Hinata, still somehow bouncing on the balls of his feet like he couldn't bear to stay fixed to the ground. With the fading of adrenaline, Atsumu himself was becoming acutely aware of the beginnings of muscle soreness and fatigue. "Good game! I'd really been looking forward to this."

"Really? I haven't," responded Atsumu cheekily after parroting back the usual 'good game,' very clearly lying through his teeth. He let go of Hinata's hand abruptly, and shuffled on to shake hands with the next player, a gangly first-year wing spiker.

"He's lyin', by the way," Osamu promptly let Hinata know when it was his turn, wholly uncaring of Atsumu's yelp and annoyed scowl.

Once Atsumu finished shaking hands with the last of Karasuno's bench-warming rookies, he looked back to the single file of Karasuno players lining up to greet their cheer section. As if he could sense his attention, Hinata swivelled around. Meeting Atsumu's gaze, he gave a quick wave and a flash of white teeth in a wide grin, still undamped by exhaustion or loss.

Spluttering and choking on his water until Osamu intervened to smack him violently on the back, Atsumu thought several of his vital organs must have just gone on strike.

"Good game," Atsumu finally returned after a few hacking coughs. He wondered for a second if it was possible for his weak croak to even be heard over the commotion of the court, but Hinata only flashed him one last smile over his shoulder before squeezing in between Kageyama and their four-eyed middle blocker.

Maybe it was that Hinata's worst fears had already been realized when he was forced to vacate their beloved court, caught in a downfall of his own engineering. Maybe he had already soared to peaks high enough to let him see that there still existed greener pastures, further ahead. Maybe, Atsumu thought, he wasn't the only one with the exigent hunger for growth.

So this time around, when it was Atsumu's turn to lead the team to bow in gratitude for the side of the court decorated in black, it was with the satisfied assurance of a well-earned victory. For the second time in two years, he thought—a promise so unshakingly firm in its conviction it had already begun to crystallize into fact—I'll be waiting for you, Hinata Shouyou. And on he went with the rest of the tournament.

±

Approximately one month out from the day of the Olympic opening ceremonies, the JVA accosts Atsumu, Hinata, Bokuto, and Sakusa after practice to propose some type of promotional gambit or other. 

JVA Dude With The Hair—an old Nekoma teammate of Yaku's, apparently, Kuroo—gesticulates wildly and says things like "promoting public engagement," "invigorating the economy," and "the hype and buzz, man!" that utterly fail to capture Atsumu's attention.

"My, my," he tuts, with the air of everyone Atsumu has ever wished to punch in the face, when nobody reacts to his spiel in a major way except for a few uncertain claps from Hinata and Bokuto. "It's like you boys have no idea how much work goes into public engagement."

"Yes," responds Sakusa slowly through his mask. "Good thing that's your job, and not mine."

"What about that Shounen Vai Olympics special issue?" Atsumu wonders. "Or all the training clips you've already filmed with us?"

JVA Lady With The Kind Freckles—an old Fukurodani manager of Bokuto's, apparently, Suzumeda (Atsumu's head is starting to hurt from all the different ways in which everyone and everyone's cousin knows each other)—gives them a winning, semi-apologetic smile.

"Please excuse my colleague. From what Akaashi tells me, Udai-sensei's manga is coming along swimmingly, and right on schedule. The promotional segments with the training highlights we filmed will also be airing on TV sometime within the next week, as planned. We're just thinking ahead here. You might be aware that the Youth Olympics are coming up soon after, and we just thought it would be appropriate to invite you gentlemen to make a comment at this year's Interhigh Tournament."

"And especially since Osaka's the host this year," adds Kuroo, "we thought it might be good press for you Jackals. Plus, Enaga Fumi and Yamamoto Akane have both confirmed their press passes with me, and a little bird tells me Akane-chan has been looking for a feature story pitch."

Brightly, Hinata says: "That sounds like so much fun! I'm in."

"I'd love to! But I can't," Bokuto says, excitement—and hair, inexplicably—deflating after double-checking the date with Suzumeda. "I've got a family thing, like, that entire weekend that I can't get out of."

"I'm out, too," says Sakusa. Both Suzumeda and Kuroo seem to be waiting for him to offer at least a little bit of further explanation the way Bokuto had, but Sakusa resolutely keeps his silence.

"Right. Well, fine," says Atsumu, when it becomes apparent to everyone after a few painful beats of silence that Sakusa has already mentally checked himself out of this human interaction. "I guess I can come, too, since y'all are beggin' me."

"Yeah, man," comes a dry voice. "I'm sure your Vabo-chan ramen ad that only aired in between kids' shows has you in high advertising demand."

"Why the fuck do you even know it exists, then!" yells Atsumu crossly, swivelling around. "Also—what the fuck, Yakkun, when'd you even get here?!"

Yaku, who seemingly materialized out of thin air just to invoke Atsumu's dark brand ambassador past, is already walking away into one of the locker rooms with nothing but a peace sign thrown in the vague direction of their group. He's completely uncaring of both Atsumu's indignant plight and Kuroo's delighted hyena cackles. To Atsumu's great dismay, even Hinata is giggling a little.

(Atsumu has a half-formed theory that Yaku Morisuke has made a sacrificial deal with some deity or other, just for the sake of being able to optimally time his every entrance and exit for the precise and intricate art of insult delivery. It would explain his lack of a soul, as well as his uncanny ability to just show up whenever it suits Atsumu the least.)

"Yeah," says Kuroo when he's finally recovered from his, in Atsumu's personal opinion, unprofessional and inappropriate cackling fit. "So what about it, then? If you two are in, I can put you in contact with Akane, and have the JVA reimburse you for your tickets."

"Well, I suppose I can see if I can fork over some time in my schedule," says Atsumu, just to be haughty and obtuse and check if he can make Hinata laugh. When he does, Atsumu feels slightly vindicated, and his dignity somewhat recovered.

"Well?" Kuroo prompts.

"Yeah, sure," he says. Osaka, huh. "It'll be fun."

±

A compiled list of frequently asked questions throughout the post-match press conference for the MSBY Black Jackals vs. Schweiden Adlers (3-1) game of November 2018:

1. How would you describe your team's plan for the upcoming 2018-2019 V. League season?
2. With whom did Hinata-senshu train before being drafted to the MSBY Black Jackals? 
3. Where has he been all this time?
4. Ushijima-senshu, do you have any comments on your recent variety show schedules? Additionally, are any members of the team available to comment on the broadcasted livestreams from the Schweiden Adlers training facilities, content which includes Hoshiumi-senshu d—
5. Just who—who was this Hinata Shouyou?

"Yo, Shouyou-kun, they just can't shut up about you on the news today," Atsumu exclaimed delightedly through a mouthful of the disgustingly healthy granola snacks Hinata always kept in his bag.

Crosscut with volleyball analyst commentary and shots of the press conference, replays of tonight's game were being shown on the nightly news' sports segment. Watching and basking in the afterglow of a loud, unwavering victory in their shared paid-for-by-MSBY-sponsors-hotel room, Atsumu lay strewn across the bed with his feet dangling off the edge, Hinata perched on the opposite end with his legs crossed neatly over each other. 

"Well, I think it's probably normal that they'd be curious. I only just showed up," Hinata returned with a humility that Atsumu could admire but frankly did not understand. 

"Aw, c'mon, Shouyou-kun," Atsumu goaded. The granola snacks were leaving behind a surprising amount of crumbs, and he flicked them impatiently off the side of the bed. "Y'know life's way too short to be modest. The drama! Honestly, if we weren't teammates, I'd think that I oughta be jealous."

Hinata laughed, always good-naturedly, and assured him, with a sincerity Atsumu honestly thought should probably always come with a flashing forewarning of potential fucking cardiac arrest, that he had nothing to worry about. Since Atsumu was now grappling with potential fucking cardiac arrest as well as the annoying granola crumbs that for some reason felt like allergens against his skin, he only had the facilities to make a vaguely affirmative dying noise before gesturing back to the TV screen.

Right—the TV. The press conference. Their 3-1 opening victory to perennial league favourites Schweiden Adlers.

"With new recruits Hinata-senshu and Sakusa-senshu in particular," a veteran sports analyst was saying to the NHK anchor, "MSBY are free to adopt a playing style completely different from their usual tactic. The difference between their newly flexible style and the one they usually have with the two-meter cannon Barnes as opposite hitter has been obvious since the moment Hinata-senshu stepped out onto court today."

A complete wild card to those who didn't know, a buzzing, anticipatory open secret to the fortunate bastards who did. With Barnes, MSBY were a no-nonsense force to be reckoned with. But if Atsumu was being perfectly honest with himself, he had always enjoyed his fair share of nonsense.

So while it had been Hinata, Kageyama, and Ushijima's home turf of Miyagi in which they played today's game, the match had felt in some ways like homecoming to Atsumu as well. It wasn't like the rush of competition had ever dimmed over the years—but there was always something about the unpredictable drama of performance, the anticipatory showiness buzzing under his skin and the crowd responding in kind, that always sparked a feeling so uniquely nostalgic to Atsumu.

"Well, we've gotta keep things interesting season by season, don't we," he'd shared cloyingly earlier at the press conference, to an equal chorus of cheers and jeers from his team. Because even back in high school, he and Osamu had been known for a particular proclivity for pulling new tricks out of seemingly thin air, especially on the fly in the face of electrifying new factors of the unknown.

Some habits, he reasoned when he met Hinata's eye, sitting a few seats down from him on the panel, were harder to shake than others. Hinata had grinned in kind then, a mirror image of his tinkling laugh now. 

Sprawled on their hotel beds, basking in the glow of victory from tonight, it was all so easy. Hinata turned away from the TV to grin back at where Atsumu was now sitting up against the headboard.

"There's no denying the way you were sending those tosses over today, Atsumu-san."

"Aghh!" exclaimed Atsumu, pointing a mock accusatory finger. Potential fucking cardiac arrest be damned. "See, the thing they never wanna tell you about flattery, Shouyou-kun, is that it will actually get you absolutely everywhere that you want."

Hinata raised an eyebrow, challenging. "Oh, really? And where exactly do you think I'm trying to go?"

"I dunno," Atsumu said, shrugging, and it was easy, so easy, the way the warmth of Hinata's eyes were trained on his, the distance between them palpable and charged. "You tell me."

"Okay." Hinata leaned forward, coyly propping his chin up with his left hand. Atsumu thought there was no way he didn't know exactly what he was doing. "Well, in that case, I think I might have an idea or two."

"Yeah?" Atsumu was placing a lot of unfounded faith in his athlete's constitution and lung capacity. He didn't think he had taken a single breath in the past couple of minutes. Potential fucking cardiac arrest. 

"Sure." Hinata's grin was ineffably bright, enough to rival sunshine at noon.

When they broke each other's gaze to look back at the screen, it was now showing TV-Meian's intricately PR-rehearsed delivery of their plans for the season.

All in all, we're absolutely thrilled to have a great range of diverse players on our roster this season. Tonight, we've only shown glimpse of what we have up our sleeves, so we're beyond excited to show you what comes next.

Tonight: promises, calls to battle, challenges, actualized and cemented right in front of Atsumu's eyes. He was sensible enough now to recognize that his ego needed constant sustenance in the form of reassurance, and there could be nothing more tangible than the beautiful arc of a perfect toss, the sounding of the final buzzer.

Nothing more real than the affirmation of Hinata Shouyou, who has always stripped him down to the barest bones of desire and ambition—of seeing something just so fuckin' cool, and the immediate responsive need that came with it. Atsumu remembered the sheer jubilation of completing his first freak quick with Osamu at seventeen, the joy of shaping their existing skillsets into something renewably effective against a new, stronger opponent.

The same way the crows of Karasuno embodied a wild, omnipresent hunger, he was here, now, with Hinata—the Jackals the first to emerge victorious from this year's V. League season.

"Look at us, Shouyou-kun," he heard himself say over the sound of themselves on the TV. "Ain't we just the dream team."

"Yeah." The TV switched to a supercut montage of the game's highlights, which was showing a multi-angle replay of Hinata setting the ball to Atsumu, Inunaki and Sakusa's digs, then one again of Hinata spiking the ball into the Adlers' court on the second touch with his left hand. Atsumu hadn't even noticed that one during the game. Really, so fuckin' cool. When Hinata turned back to Atsumu, he was smiling—not one of his typically blinding, life trajectory-altering smiles, only a subdued, private quirk to his lips and shining eyes. "Really, really good game today, Atsumu-san."

"To the first of many," said Atsumu, raising his granola bar to a mock-toast, still half-wrapped in the packaging, which Hinata met easily with an ultra-serious expression before they both collapsed into laughter.

"Great!" said Hinata a few moments later, after they had both mellowed back down. Then, as something charged dissipated around them: "I'd better get going, though. I promised my mom I'd go home and spend the night with my family while we're here."

"Ah," said Atsumu, trying his very best to come across both uninterested and unfazed. He didn't think he was doing a particularly good job at either. "I was wonderin' why you even let 'em book a hotel room for ya tonight. You gonna take all your stuff with you right now, or are you gonna be comin' back here before we leave?"

"I'm going to be meeting up with some old high school friends tomorrow, and that might take a while. I dunno, I should probably just take everything, just in case, right?"

"Well." Excessively, Atsumu cleared his throat one more time. "I mean—if you want, I could just take it down to the train tomorrow before we leave, so you can just head straight to the station and not have to carry it with ya the entire day."

"You sure?" Hinata paused while zipping up his hoodie to look at Atsumu.

"'Course, 's nothing, I don't mind at all," babbled Atsumu in a too-quick succession, waving a hand that he could only hope came across as nonchalant. 

"All right." Hinata grinned and shouldered his backpack, gripping both straps tightly. "Thanks, Atsumu-san!"

"No worries, like I said. Now go enjoy yerself at home. And—tell Tobio-kun when ya see him that next time—well, I dunno, actually. I'll leave you to come up with somethin' for him, I'm sure it'll be way better and more violent anyway. Haha." Atsumu swallowed.

"Thanks so much, Atsumu-san, I'll see you tomorrow."

The questions that I'm sure are on everyone's mind after tonight: just where did Hinata Shouyou-senshu come from? the host on TV asked rhetorically as the program began to wrap up the sports segment. As the door clicked shut behind Hinata, Atsumu let himself flop, starfished, down onto the double bed he'd claimed by the window. He had half a mind to change the channel back to the default hotel welcome screen, but couldn't be bothered to get up and fetch the remote.

What will the Black Jackals make of him?

±

"There's Always Hope In the Younger Generation"
Olympians Hinata Shouyou and Miya Atsumu reflect on training, Interhigh finals, and the future of Japanese volleyball

Yamamoto Akane

Osaka's premier Division 1 team since they entered the league in 1971, the MSBY Black Jackals are in the height of their career. Reigning V. League champions, they were the first to steal away the Schweiden Adlers' consecutive championship streak back in the 2019-2020 V. League season before defending their title again this past spring. An English acronym derived from 結び – connection – MSBY runs by the motto of "connecting people through their hard work."

Just an hour before Niiyama Girls' High of the Miyagi prefecture and Inarizaki High of the Hyogo prefecture faced off against one another in the girls' finals of the 2021 National Interhigh Volleyball Championships, two MSBY-associated members of this year's Olympic Team were able to join me in the heart of Osaka city: Miya Atsumu, starting setter of the MSBY Black Jackals, and Hinata Shouyou, who played opposite hitter alongside Miya-senshu for two seasons. He now plays for ASAS São Paulo in Brazil.

I was very lucky to get the chance to speak to Hinata-senshu and Miya-senshu about their predictions for the girls' finals, the upcoming summer Olympics in Tokyo, as well as their hopes and aspirations for the future of volleyball in Japan. 

Thank you so much for joining me today, Miya-senshu, Hinata-senshu! 

HINATA SHOUYOU: It's our pleasure to be here! 

MIYA ATSUMU: Absolutely.

First of all—Hinata-senshu, welcome back! How does it feel to be back in Japan after your debut with ASAS São Paulo in Brazil?

HS: Thank you! Well, I wasn't even really gone for a super long time, but it's still great to be back, even if the people over in Brazil have all been so wonderful to work with. Being able to play for the Olympics in Japan has always been a dream of mine, ever since Tokyo won the bidding for the host city. So I was really always planning to be back for this. 

MA: Always chasing the volleyball.

HS: [laughs] Yeah, I guess you can call it that.

What about you, Miya-senshu? Do you have any foreign league plans in the future, or will you be staying with the MSBY Black Jackals for another season?

MA: No plans for the time being, no. I think we're all just focused on the Olympics right now.

Exciting! And how are you feeling about today's Interhigh match? It must be weird, no? Does this recall a lot of memory for the two of you, as former rivals and teammates at earlier points in your career? 

MA: I mean, we're still teammates.

HS: We're both ex and current teammates! [laughs] Personally, I'm just so incredibly excited to see how the finals end up playing out for this year.

Yes, speaking up the match-up at this year's finals, how exciting that it's Inarizaki versus Niiyama—the girls' counterpart of Miya-senshu's alma mater versus a team with Hinata-senshu's sister on the roster!

HS: Right! What are the chances?

MA: Crazy, right? We were just talking about that earlier.

Would you say that you see this as a sort of battle playing out between your respective legacies? Will you be rooting for either side in particular?

HS: Wow, I hadn't even thought of it like that. That's actually kind of super cool. But, you know—as a brother, I'm obviously going to support my little sister as best as I can. As a player, though, I know it'll be whoever plays the better game that ends up winning the match. Something really important that I've learned over the years is that there is no game that's as good as won until the match point is scored. It seems obvious to say, but I think we're just excited to observe how these match-ups end up playing out!

MA: Yeah, totally agree with that. I don't know if it's still like this, but when I was in [Inarizaki] high school, our cheering squad was sort of known for how they'd often switch between cheering for and booing us, all depending on the quality of play on that particular day. It scared the hell out of me at first, but I think as time went on and I got used to it, it started making a lot more sense to me. We're athletes, first and foremost, so it's what we do in the match itself that matters. I tend to think of it as more just an indication of how you're performing. 

HS: I'm not personally gonna be booing anyone today, though! Or ever, I guess. Bad sportsmanship.

MA: Well, neither am I, but the principle still stands. I think it'd be sort of an insult to the teams if I only thought of them as, like, I don't know. Just our "legacies." Whatever that even really means.

HS: Yeah, totally! Everyone who's here today is only here because they're incredible players.

That's a really great way of thinking about it. 

HS: Sorry, I really didn't mean to get defensive just now! I totally understood what you meant. I think I just never want to talk about players and teams in terms of living up to old players' legacies. It can really be pretty unfair for everyone involved. 

MA: If I can just jump in here for a second, sorry—I agree. Even titles won by the same team with the same lineup of players don't matter if they can't defend it in the next tournament. I think every competent athlete and performance deserves praise in their own right. Both of these teams have made it as far as the finals, so if we're gonna talk about them, then I think we should only be talking about the quality of their own work that got them here. 

HS: And I know for sure that both teams will be doing their best out on the court today, so I'm excited either way! 

I'm sure we're in for a very exciting match today. You briefly mention the future, Hinata-senshu, so let's talk about that for a bit to close things off—we can't avoid mentioning that the Olympics are in less than a month. How are you feeling about that? How has training been going?

HS: Oh, man. Well, it's both me and Atsumu-san here's first seasons on the national team, and for the biggest stage there is! I'm so excited.

MA: Yeah. Training's tough, but it always is, you know how it is. None of us would be here if we didn't know exactly what we were in for. And we're planning to win it all, of course.

HS: Yeah, of course. I said earlier that this has been a dream of mine since forever. I'm sure it would be an honour for any of us.

Yes, you and a host of other players on this year's Olympic team have been dubbed by fans as the "Monster Generation."

HS & MA: Yep. 

What do you have to say to the next incoming generation of players who we will be seeing here at this tournament today?

MA: You ain't gonna be kicking us out of our spots anytime soon, but it's still always exciting to see new talent.

HS: There's always hope in the younger generation. It's always so inspiring to watch and be a part of it knowing they'll go far, and I'm honestly so honoured and excited to be here at this tournament today.

MA: I'll end by saying this: "Watch out, world!" Is that corny? It's how I feel. 

Thank you very much for your time today, Hinata-senshu, Miya-senshu. Enjoy the match.

HS & MA: Thank you!

±

Atsumu has been at the Osaka city stadium plenty of times throughout his professional career, and has never really thought too much of the venue itself. But with the added colourful decoration of assorted high school team banners, Atsumu realizes suddenly that it still kind of looks the same as it had at his last high school tournament.

"They're even selling the same T-shirts at the merch stand, look!" Hinata points out to him as they make their way across the now-empty foyer into centre court, tugging lightly on Atsumu's sleeve.

They're a little late to the start of the game after the interview with Yamamoto, because as much as Osamu loves to remind Atsumu he's an F-list celebrity at best, if he's gonna be recognized anywhere, it'd be at a volleyball game. And it isn't like Atsumu goes out of his way to avoid interactions with mostly well-intentioned fans like certain misanthropic teammates of his, but Hinata happens to be the type of famous person who also has zero clue to as to how famous he actually is. So while Atsumu likes attention as much as the average person always seems to think he does, his patience is limited today, and he would like to avoid being swarmed when possible. Ultimately, they decide to loiter outside until after the blow of the first whistle to finally sneak onto the court sidelines, slipping into the area reserved for press, a handful of JVA officials, and some other VIPs. 

Hinata Natsu's presence on the court is a flashy one that demands the full extent of the audience's attention, much like her brother's. As a libero, she's quick and nimble in a way that reminds Atsumu of Karasuno's Nishinoya from all those years ago. She hasn't had enough experience that she can rely on reading her opponents and preemptively adjusting her on-court position as much as the liberos Atsumu's used to playing with, but she more than compensates with a deep repertoire of showy and spectacular saves, a textbook exhibit of superior reflexes and speed. 

"What, do the ninja maneuvers run in the family or somethin'?" jokes Atsumu, letting out a low, impressed whistle as Natsu dives to the floor in a dig for a particularly nasty line shot from Inarizaki's left. 

"I don't think it even did for me," replies Hinata honestly, cheering and clapping for the save without taking his eyes off the action on the court. "You know I never even managed to pull off a proper receive until we played each other in my first year."

"Huh?" Atsumu tears his eyes from the court for a second to look at Hinata's side profile. "Really?"

"Yeah," Hinata replies with a sheepish laugh. "It was really just such a regular receive, so I doubt you'd remember. But—yeah. For a while, spiking was the only thing I really knew how to do."

"Huh," says Atsumu again, and thinks it would probably be annoying and disingenuous to say something like, Well, everyone had to start from somewhere, right? He also thinks it's somewhat useless to waste his breath on that when they're both now on the national team, so instead he just says: "That's kind of insane to think about now."

It's not that he had no recollection of the kind of player Hinata was during that game, the wild unharnessed ball of energy that he was. Rough around the edges, sure, but his endless drive and potential had been obvious, even then, so it always makes Atsumu cringe with retrospective humiliation to remember what he'd said to Hinata and Kageyama before the start of the game. It's just definitely strange to think back on any shortcomings that might have existed in his defense when Hinata's on-court specialization is now one that Atsumu would say—with conviction and pride—is as close as anyone could get to a jack of all trades. Master of a fuckin' lot of them, too, he might add.

"Yeah, I guess," Hinata concedes, scratching the back of his head. "But, you know, it was right around that time when I was so focused on trying to improve my defense when I showed her her first volleyball drill. She was always big into receiving. I guess it kinda makes sense that she'd be a libero now, looking back."

"And she's a damn fuckin' good one at that, too," says Atsumu, nodding solemnly in approval when she sends an overhand bump in an honestly beautiful arc over to her setter. 

"Damn right." Hinata's eyes shine with conviction and with pride. 

"So I guess it was you who got her into volleyball, then?"

"I wouldn't exactly say that." Hinata shakes his head a little. "I don't think I could've actually gotten her to do anything if I tried. We used to spend a lot of our free time together when we were younger, though. I would be practicing by myself at home, and she was still at that age where she just wanted to copy whatever I was doing, so I ended up teaching her some drills here and there, too. I dunno, it was fun, and I guess I was just always so excited that she just sort of ended up picking that up from me."

Of course—the very way Hinata exists as a player has undoubtedly been a main cited source of inspiration for half of the entire V. League. Of course it'd be doubly true for his family, saturated with the full extent of his endless enthusiasm and drive. And, well—fuck Atsumu if he doesn't understand the extent to which volleyball can act as a vessel between siblings.

"Y'know, she must have missed you a lot, when you left," he says after a beat of silence between them. It comes out far softer than he intended, and he tears his eyes off Hinata, clearing his throat, to focus back on the court where Niiyama's setter is now preparing for her serve.

"Yeah, I guess so." Hinata's response comes after a beat. "I missed her, too."

For a moment too long, Hinata remains quiet. Niiyama snags another untouched service ace from right under Inarizaki's nose, and secures set point. The whistle blows, and they switch court sides again before heading into the final set.

±

"Ugh," says Osamu, stationed behind the counter, as soon as Atsumu and Hinata's arrival at Onigiri Miya is signalled by the chimes at the door. Hinata waves enthusiastically in greeting before excusing himself to go to the bathroom. When Atsumu takes both their stuff to get settled at a nearby table, Osamu fixes him with a blank stare. His specialty—a deeply indifferent kind of disdain. It honestly gives Atsumu the creeps.

"Wouldja stop lookin' at me like that?" Atsumu's been here for all of five seconds, and he already can feel the irritated cross-popping veins flashing at his temple.

"I'm not lookin' at you like anything," Osamu says mildly.

"Bullshit," Atsumu exclaims, jabbing a finger in Osamu's general direction. "Ya know who you look like right now? Otousan. Like when he says that he ain't pissed, just disappointed, but you can tell that he's pissed and I can tell that he's pissed."

“I ain’t disappointed,” says Osamu, rolling his eyes at Atsumu's tirade. “Just pissed.”

"Shut up."

"Seriously, you disgust me."

"You done?"

"I could never be done," Osamu says gravely like he's carrying the weight of the entire world on his shoulders. "But as long as you know you're currently disgustin' me."

"Osamu-san!" exclaims Hinata when he comes back to the table, effectively putting an end to Atsumu's retort when he abruptly snaps his mouth shut. See what he keeps saying? Hinata is kind of a walking facilitator of conflict resolution. An olive branch on legs. A talisman of harmonious good fortune who has adopted a human form and plays volleyball. Atsumu could go on.

"'Sup, Shouyou-kun." Even evil, stupid Osamu pauses his lifelong pursuit of making Atsumu's life hell to nod at Hinata.

Hinata smiles and says: "My sister's still at the venue right now, but she texted just now saying she'll be here with her team in about twenty minutes."

"Great." Osamu nods again. "Well, we've definitely got the space today. I'll go and combine the tables in a second. I should just block out an area permanently one of these days and call it the Full Volleyball Team zone."

"And how much of that business is thanks to yer super-cool, super-famous athlete twin?" prods Atsumu.

"Zero percent," says Osamu dryly. "Your cheap ass has never paid for food in your life."

"I make up for it in referrals! And the association you get to have to my name. Instagram story product placement."

"How 'bout you make up for it in helping me set up the goddamn tables, ya nasty, ungrateful freeloader?" Osamu commands, snapping his fingers at Atsumu in a way he knows he picked up from their mother.

"Hmph." Atsumu is in the middle of trying to decide between a clever retort about Osamu freeloading off him in the womb and threatening to leave a nasty zero-stars review on Tabelog. When he sees Hinata make to get up as well, he ends up discarding both options in favour of hurrying after Osamu to the back of the restaurant.

"Nah, Shouyou-kun, 's fine, I can go help him myself, you just sit here and wait for Natsu and 'em, yeah?"

"Well—if you're sure," Hinata says, a little bit skeptical. 

"'Course I am. We're fine, don't you worry your pretty head!" he chirps. The frequency of his speaking voice is definitely not usually this high. Osamu, of course, notices, and hits him on the shoulder with a dish rag when they're out of Hinata's earshot. 

"Ow! What the fuck, 'Samu, is that how you treat all your employees?"

"Of course not," snorts Osamu. "You've just got the special family treatment. Ain't that nice of me?"

±

Growing up with Osamu, the Miya household was always a loud one of complete and utter discord. Cluttered, noisy, and chock full of verbal warfare is how Atsumu would describe most family dinners, even now when he and Osamu both make the trip back to Amagasaki to visit as fully grown adults.

With him and Osamu as a reference, Hinata and his sister are so agreeable and mature that it's baffling to Atsumu. He doesn't know what their parents did right, but he has never seen such a genuinely civil and harmonious relationship between siblings.

"Niichan, you really didn't have to come all the way out here for this," Natsu's saying around a mouthful of Osamu's daily special. Today, it happens to be tuna mayo, which Atsumu knows because he'd asked—civilly requested, thank you, no begging involved whatsoever—Osamu to make it so at the beginning of the week. 

"What do you mean? I couldn't come to any of your games last year, so of course I did! Plus, we had a weekend off training, and all of this is paid for by the JVA anyway," says Hinata, reaching across the table. Atsumu nudges the dish full of umeboshi gently in his direction until Hinata can pick them up easily with his outstretched chopsticks. "Oh! Thanks, Atsumu-san."

"Yeah, the JVA are all about—whatever Kuroo-kun said to us to get us to come." Atsumu waves his chopstick-free hand around to illustrate his point. "But I'm super glad we did. It's like a mini-vacation, and we got to see y'all play an amazing game."

"Thank you, Miya-san," says Natsu's teammate, the #3 outside hitter with the mean line shot. "It's an honour that you and Hinata-san came to watch us, really."

"I keep saying it's our pleasure, but it's true," says Hinata, right as Osamu brings them another round of spicy salmon and he starts positively cooing at the plate. 

For the rest of the evening, Atsumu talks easily with the Hinatas, signs a few autographs when some of Natsu's quieter teammates finally speak up to ask for them, and waves off their coach every time she tries to handle the bill.

"Nah, c'mon," he says the third time she offers. "It'll be on the house. For our champions."

"I'm pretty sure it's only Osamu-san who can actually offer that deal, Atsumu-san," says Hinata, quirking an eyebrow.

"I was actually gonna offer it anyway, but since 'Tsumu so generously did it first he can just go ahead and foot the bill for the rest of y'all," says Osamu, who Atsumu swears was nowhere near them five seconds ago. Atsumu has told many people before in his life that twin telepathy is a myth, but it's times like this where it does seem like Osamu has a preternatural sense for detecting when Atsumu is in less-than-ideal situations, which he of course only ever uses to make them worse.

Atsumu splutters, to a chorus of giggles from the table: "What kind of—"

"Seriously, don't worry about it," Osamu says to the Niiyama coach, who seems to be growing more alarmed at the twins by the second. "My brother's got it all covered."

Eventually, she does finally concede after a horde of joint convincing from Hinata, Osamu, and Atsumu, though it might not have appeared to the casual listener like Osamu and Atsumu had been on the same side of the argument at all. 

"Is it okay if I stay here for a bit, Niichan?" Natsu asks when her teammates start gathering their things to leave.

"We'll all drop her off back at the inn before it's too late, don't worry," Hinata reassures her coach. 

"Yeah," says Osamu once it's just the two sets of siblings left in the restaurant. "Y'know, I think I might just close early today and just let y'all hang around. It's usually pretty slow by this time of night, anyway," he says placidly, before yanking a protesting Atsumu up by the collar of his shirt and shoving a mop into his flailing hands.

±

"So, how 'bout it? Up for a quick two-on-two game before we leave?" Atsumu prompts when they all walk Natsu back, facing toward the gymnasium across the street instead of the inn her team are staying at, illuminated under a halo of streetlights. 

"There's no way this could be fair," Osamu complains, even as they push the door into one of the unlocked practice gyms. "One of y'all literally just won the Interhigh finals not five hours ago. The other two are Olympians."

"Aww, boohoo," taunts Atsumu. "All the times you skipped the gym over the years finally catchin' up to you?"

"You're right. The two of them can't be on the same team, that's for sure," says Natsu thoughtfully as Atsumu dodges the wayward ball Osamu chucks at his head with easy accuracy, like they're both still fifteen instead of twenty-five. "So, what, me and Niichan versus you guys?"

"Hey, you know, I wouldn't underestimate the two of them together, either," Hinata chimes in. "You should've seen them back when we were in high school. Maybe the fairest matchup would be me and Osamu-san versus you and Atsumu-san?"

"Nah, man, I haven't seriously played since—well, since around the time we last beat you, Shouyou-kun, actually," grins Osamu with all his teeth. Hinata rolls his eyes good-naturedly as he ducks underneath the net to join his side.

"It's true. You'll be doing the hard carrying in the team. Sorry 'bout that, Shouyou-kun," Atsumu tells Hinata. With great magnanimous effort, he ignores the choice finger Osamu flashes at him in response. See? He's consciously making the choice to be the bigger person today. "Well, c'mon then, Natsu-chan! We're not gonna lose to some old dudes, are we?"

"Never!" she smacks his waiting palm in a loud and honestly quite painful high five, grinning widely from ear to ear in a way that makes it glaringly obvious which sunshine bloodline she's descended from. 

"I don't think Atsumu-san understands how age works," Hinata stage whispers at Osamu, who snickers while he's crouched over tying his shoe laces.

"I'm just speaking from Natsu-chan's perspective here," Atsumu declares grandly. "I don't count, 'cause I'm on her team, and together we're gonna win this thing in five minutes flat and get her back to her team before curfew."

"What curfew? Natsu, do you have a curfew?"

"Whatever you say," Osamu snorts, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows as Natsu ignores her brother's attempts to interrogate her. "I may have quit volleyball, but if there's one thing I've never slacked on for a single day in my life, it's kickin' your ass."

"Okay, well, that's enough talk," interjects Natsu, spinning the ball between her palms impatiently. "Are we gonna start this game sometime before you have to hand in your retirement, or what?"

"Smartass," remarks Atsumu, delighted at this development. "Okay. Let's go."

Natsu puts such a mean spin on her serve that Atsumu thinks it's almost kind of a waste she doesn't regularly get to participate in offence as libero. She's fast, and it's amazing to see her in action up close. Atsumu thinks that he can definitely see the family resemblance as she lightly pushes the ball with the tips of her fingers over Osamu's block in a feint.

"Hey, I'm the one who taught you that!" yells her brother indignantly from the gym floor where he dove in an attempt to save it.

"And so the teacher becomes the student." Atsumu shakes his head mockingly as he high-fives a whooping Natsu. "It must be hard to watch this happen. If you don't keep up you're gonna get left behind, Shouyou-kun."

"Ugh, y'know, I don't even care if we lose," says Osamu to Hinata. He's glowering while Hinata feigns outrage. "Next time I get the ball I'm gonna be aiming straight for his big fat mouth."

"That'd be a foul, even in dodgeball," Natsu chimes in with an air of complete guileless innocence, catching the ball that her brother had tossed over the net neatly in one hand. "Sorry, Osamu-niichan."

Atsumu lets out a belly laugh, leaning forward to rest his hands on his knees. "Shouyou-kun, your sister is cool and awesome and hilarious. Any chance you'd be up to trade siblings?"

"As much as I'd like to be rid of you for good, there's not a chance I'd subject a perfectly innocent Natsu-chan to—you!" says Osamu, grunting as he dives to receive Natsu's—did Atsumu mention nasty? Truly disgusting, in the most 100% positive way—serve.

Atsumu opens his mouth to retort, and both Hinatas laugh in kind. The game, the stakes of which seem no lower than any game he's played in his professional career thus far, continues until Hinata puts his foot down and contends that Natsu absolutely needs to leave and go to bed, in accordance with the curfew that Natsu swears doesn't exist.

After the three of them walk her back to the inn, Natsu hugs her brother one last time, swears to visit Tokyo once she finishes the last of her summer coursework, and waves at Atsumu and Osamu before disappearing into inn stairwell up to join her team. 

When Osamu turns to face Atsumu and Hinata, his eyebrows disappear up into his Onigiri Miya baseball cap. Atsumu realizes belatedly, that without either of them even consciously deciding to move, his right arm had looped itself around Hinata's shoulders, and Hinata had been leaning back in response.

Trying at once to find an excuse to extricate himself quickly without making it weird with Hinata while simultaneously conducting an eyebrow conversation with Osamu to minimize his damage, Atsumu crouches down as naturally and surreptitiously as he can.

"Just—" Atsumu yanks loose the double knot in his shoelaces before relooping them, "—tying my shoelaces, haha. Sorry. We can get goin' now."

"Oh!" says Hinata. "Don't worry about it, Atsumu-san."

Osamu looks terminally unimpressed when Atsumu straightens up again, but some spirit or other must have finally heard Atsumu's desperate pleas and decided to shine mercy on him, because he tosses his keys over to Atsumu and says: "Uh-huh, okay. I'm gonna go back to the restaurant to do some inventory, but y'all can just head back to my place without me. On second thought, though…" In a flash, he snatches the keys back from Atsumu and hands them to Hinata instead. "Just don't let him burn anythin' down," he says to Hinata, who nods very seriously.

I thought you said you were done at the shop already, Atsumu almost blurts out, but Osamu glares at him so intently and meaningfully that he snaps his mouth shut promptly.

"All right, then, Shouyou-kun. Let's get goin'."

±

Generally, Atsumu preferred to stay out of the complex web of incomprehensible V. League politics, beyond the various obligations imparted to him by their manager. This all-expenses-paid-for-by-sponsors beach vacation in celebration of MSBY having finished the season at the top of the league standing, though—yeah, this he could totally get behind.

Even Sakusa, who typically made a point of begging off any function he wasn't contractually obliged to attend, was considerably less disgruntled than Atsumu was used to. 

"Careful," he ribbed, peering over at Sakusa from where he was lying on his towel under the shade of a huge beach umbrella. "You wouldn't want all these people thinkin' you might be capable of enjoying yourself or anythin' like that, now, would ya?"

"Would you drop dead if your existence wasn't directly involved in ruining my day for two seconds?" Sakusa asked from behind his wide-framed sunglasses. Atsumu could probably see his own bug-eye-view reflection in the lens if he leaned in close enough.

"Y'know what?" Atsumu really considered it for a second. "I just might."

"Good. Die, then."

"Harsh, Omi-kun," he responded cheekily, shaking his head. Cupping his hands around his mouth, Atsumu turns toward the beach volleyball nets to yell out: "Yo, Shouyou-kun!"

"Atsumu-san!" Hinata waved back at him frantically from where Inunaki and Barnes were helping him set up. "Come on, come help us!"

"Be right there!" he called, before turning back to Sakusa. "You gonna come with?"

Sakusa sat up just enough to briefly cast a glance in the direction of the net where Hinata was currently talking to Inunaki, turned back to survey Atsumu in a clinical once-over, and promptly laid back down. 

"No," he declared with a sense of finality. 

Atsumu shrugged. "'Kay. Suit yourself."

"I have been. I am. I will."

"Omi-san!" Hinata called, as if he could hear the two of them from all the way over there. "You can join too, when you want!"

"..." said Sakusa, but not even Sakusa Kiyoomi, with his perfectly updated immunization record, was fully inoculated against the Hinata effect. "Maybe later," he conceded.

"He can't hear you from all the way over there," Atsumu told him. "You're really gonna have to speak up."

"You can just tell him when you get there," Sakusa snapped, before promptly lying back down onto his towel and turning his back to Atsumu. Seriously. And they thought Atsumu was the one with attitude problems.

±

"Aw, shit," Atsumu said when a botched serve of his ended up flying directly to—oh, their very own fucking libero, fucking fantastic. "Y'know, hearin' you speak about all the ways it's different to play on sand and actually havin' to deal with it myself are still two completely different things."

"Right?" said Hinata. "I did so much research on it before I left, but the first couple of times were still completely hell for me. Don't worry, though, you'll get used to it. Eventually, you learn to play with the wind and sand instead of against it."

"That sounds all well and perfect and good," Atsumu said as Meian got ready to launch their counterattack, "but I've got no idea what you mean."

"First, you gotta really dig your feet into the sand so you don't slip," instructed Hinata. "That way, you'll get way better traction for passing and jumping, and just generally moving around, too!"

"Huh." When Atsumu really dug his heels beneath the top surface of sand, he found that the solid layer underneath not only afforded him more stability, but also the reassurance of a cool, smooth surface beneath the sun-baked veneer. "'Kay. I see."

From the other side of the net, Meian let out a groan after attempting a spike. Balefully (Meian and Inunaki), gleefully (Atsumu), and helpfully (Hinata, somehow), the four of them watched as it flew straight out of bounds.

"Wow, you never truly appreciate how easy we have it that our definition of 'court awareness' doesn't have to factor in, like, extenuating weather circumstances," remarked Inunaki dryly.

"Seriously," said Meian, wiping his face with the collar of his shirt. "I feel like I need some built-in AI to give me a detailed analytical meteorological report every time I have to even look at the ball."

"Yeah," laughed Hinata. "I've got no immediate tips for that one, except you just have to pay more attention to the wind direction, and consider that as a factor every time you aim. You guys are playing the bad side right now, though. But we'll switch soon, so don't worry!"

"What was that thing they called you in that TV special spot they did on us last season?" Atsumu pretended to stop and think for a second, like he hadn't watched it so many times he'd memorized the entire thing from front to back. Complete with timestamps. "Ninja Shouyou from the concrete? Sounds badass and all, but I think they should've considered rebranding, 'cause sand has to be so much worse than that. At least you can actually get traction to jump on concrete. Comin' back to indoor after this must've felt like you finally got to take off, like. Extra training weights."

"No, that makes it sound so boring and exhausting!" Hinata protested, then leaned his weight back and tilted his head up the way he always did when he was trying to think. "It's not like the sand is there to actively weigh you down, you know. You just have to get used to it. Once you figure out how to really accept it, it's really just another learning experience, I swear."

In the end, Hinata and Atsumu took that set from Inunaki and Meian, to the surprise of no one except maybe perennially overly modest Hinata. Following their whooping victory and imminent swears of violent revenge from Inunaki, the rest of MSBY rotated in and out of the subsequent games.

Atsumu almost felt the urge to point out that there were a lot more nets stretched across the beach and they didn't all have to congregate here like toddlers awaiting their turn on the playground slide. Though after taking one look at where Hinata was giving Bokuto pointers for spiking against the wind and swerving his head back to observe the rest of his teammates observing Hinata—for once, Atsumu kept his mouth shut.

Eventually, as promised, even Sakusa ended up emerging from his self-imposed seclusion inside the protections of the beach umbrella, though he resolutely refused to play with anyone except Hinata as his partner. 

Atsumu, adjusting the Onigiri Miya cap he stole from Osamu's first shipment and ducking under the net to join Bokuto's side: "... Well then, let's get this fuckin' party started!"

Sakusa: "…"

Hinata and Bokuto, in unison: "Hell yeah!"

±

After several more gruelling pickup games, in which Sakusa acclimated to the sand at a speed that, very truly, put every non-Hinata Jackal to shame, most of their team decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel before dinner.

"I think I'm gonna find sand on every part of my body 'til the day I die," Atsumu declared shamelessly, even as he plopped himself down next Hinata on the beach, sitting with his legs crossed in lotus pose where the sand met the lapping lines of ocean waves. 

Hinata cracked an eye open to look sideways at Atsumu—had he been meditating just now? Atsumu knew he was a person who meditated. Was it bad manners to interrupt someone while they were meditating and honing their spiritual prowess? Probably. Whatever. It wasn't like Atsumu had ever claimed to possess exceedingly gentlemanly manners.

"Yeah, it does feel like that," Hinata said, shading his eyes from the sun with his left hand and squinting up at Atsumu a little. "It'll still stick if you're wet, but at least that way it'll stick in a way so that you can wash them off later in the shower, instead of having the loose sand falling into all your belongings. Trust me," he said, as darkly as Hinata was physically capable of, which was to say not very much at all, "that's a lot worse."

"Oh?" Atsumu lifted an eyebrow. "Have you gone in yet today? The ocean, I mean?" 

"Not yet," Hinata said, still squinting up at Atsumu with a smile. "I know you're planning on pushing me in, Atsumu-san, but I'm gonna go in myself before you even get the chance."

"Hey now," Atsumu protested. "Who d'you think I am? I'd never push you in if I didn't think I had the element of surprise and certain victory on my side, Shouyou-kun."

Hinata laughed. "Of course. My bad. C'mon then, let's go."

There was something particular as they waded out, the rhythmic ebb and flow of clear blue seawater that stretched along the horizon until it became sky. Maybe the lingering satisfaction of finishing the season with gold, compounded by the waves that seemed to glitter in the warm, late-spring draft.

"Ahh," Atsumu said. "You know I'm loyal to indoor, but I'd consider makin' the switch to beach if I could always be by the water. When's the last time you got to just be like this?"

"In Rio, probably," Hinata replied, smiling. "After work and practice, I used to just sit by Copacabana beach. It was always packed when I went, though, not like this! Especially during the Olympics, since it was where the beach volleyball events took place."

"Oh?" Atsumu hadn't thought about the timeline of Hinata's excursion to Brazil or its overlaps—when he thought of the Rio Olympics, he only really thought of a roster that didn't include his name, even as he knew the JVA could never have taken their chances with two rookie setters.

He wondered if Hinata had gone to see any of the matches in person. He knew Kageyama had been there. He wondered if Hinata had been there to see Japan win, to see them lose, to watch every last point scored down on the court. He wondered if the two of them had hung out, in between matches and pizza deliveries and press conferences. He wondered—

"Is it different, the beach?" he asked instead. "From here to Brazil, I mean."

A crinkle appeared between Hinata's eyes, creasing in thought. "Yeah," he answered after a few moments. "I mean, definitely. From the kinds of things people do, to the way the sun looks on the water. Yeah."

"Yeah?" Atsumu prompted, sensing an uncharacteristic hint of hesitancy.

"Well, I always went alone, back then," said Hinata. "I think that's mostly the difference. I'm here now, with the team. There were more strangers in Rio, always, but even if it was for playing beach—you'd only team up with someone for one tournament at a time, really."

"Yeah, I know," said Atsumu. "I can't imagine getting used to that." The flimsiness of a temporary matchup, by design tethered to nothing but the immediate action at hand—it had been just fine for one day on vacation, and even then these were all already people Atsumu had worked with for much of his professional career. Atsumu liked spontaneity, sure, but only when it was grounded in something deeper and more secure, like his feet digging into the cooler, firm layer of sand.

He thought of himself in his Osaka apartment, livestreaming the matches alone whenever Osamu had to work late at night. He thought of Hinata in Rio, surrounded by things more familiar than strange and people more strange than familiar. 

"It was fun, and I learned a lot from a lot of different people that way. I got a lot stronger from it—I even ended up running into someone I knew from Miyagi, you know! But the water always felt different. I used to sit by myself, and think that it would lead me back home. Silly, isn't it? It's not even the same ocean." 

"I don't think it's silly," said Atsumu valiantly instead of asking who from Miyagi, was it Kageyama, who else could you possibly have seen, what's their history with you? "'S true though. Landed you back here, didn't it?"

"Yeah," said Hinata, looking up at Atsumu then out at the coastline. "That's true." 

Atsumu didn't say: It landed you here with us, with me. Instead, he clung to the information Hinata gave him like the individual grains of the beach soaked up the surrounding rays of sun. Hinata had never been particularly secretive about his time in Brazil, but it always felt like something luxurious, being privy to these moments when the Hinata of Rio always seemed even further out of Atsumu's reach. He seized each fragmented image greedily, slotting them like jigsaw pieces between the Hinata he saw take flight across the net as a teenager, and the Hinata who always stood opposite him as an adult.

"Dream team, haven't we been?" Atsumu said, remembering what he said to Hinata after their first game together, victory underpinned by identical shades of black.

"Yeah." Just as he had back then, Hinata smiled, bright and sure as always. With us. With me. "We sure have."

Maybe still half-drunk on elation and contentment, Atsumu started to blurt out: "Shouyou-kun, I—" without even fully thinking through what it was he wanted to say, but Hinata had already begun to speak before him.

"I'm not going to be renewing for another season, Atsumu-san," Hinata blurted in an uncharacteristic, distracted rush, like the words were tumbling out of his mouth in a fit of nerves Atsumu never associated with the Hinata he knew as a teammate and as a partner. The waves crashed loudly by their feet, buried in the cool wet sand on the muddled border between land and water. "With MSBY, I mean. At least, not if everything goes well."

"What?" Whatever Atsumu had thought to expect, it hadn't been the quick permeation of ugly panic deep into the pits of his stomach. "What d'you mean, if everything goes well—where else're you gonna go? Shouyou-kun, we're already at the top."

"No, there's—there's this team in Brazil, ASAS São Paulo, they made me an offer a few weeks ago, right before the championship. I obviously couldn't go physically to their tryouts, but they let me know they're willing to waive that process and let me just do a video tryout instead."

"Oh," said Atsumu dumbly. Well, of course. Kageyama had gone to Italy last year, and Ushijima's recent draft into one of the top Polish teams had made headlines as well. Of course. "Oh, wow. Wow, holy shit, congratulations," he babbled, momentarily stunned by the warring gulps of upset shock and fierce pride rising in his chest. But something in the flippant way Hinata had said it—there's this team in Brazil—as if any volleyball player worth their salt wouldn't know the club by name, individual player statistics, and never-ending list of international accolades—had him swallowing the former and barelling toward the latter at top speed, like his jump serves at top form.

"No shit?" he said again. Come on, Miya. Pull it together. "Wow. No need to downplay it at all with me, Shouyou-kun. Holy fuck, that's huge."

"Yeah, I guess," Hinata laughed, abashed, always somewhat prone to shying away from direct praise. Atsumu grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him a little. There was no way in hell he'd let Hinata get away with modest humility this time, not over something like this. 

"No, c'mon, why're you being so lowkey about this? We're—listen, the season's over, we're on vacation, I can bother Wan-san to buy us all some drinks and I'm sure we can throw you a whole party before we go back—"

"Atsumu-san, it's fine," Hinata insisted, laughing, strands of hair falling into his eyes as Atsumu continued to shake him in place. "I don't need all that, and you know I don't really like drinking too much. I just—you know I didn't tell you 'cause I wanted to gloat or anything, I just—"

"Well, why the hell not?" demanded Atsumu, ignoring the pang in his chest. "'Cause you're a nice, humble person who doesn't like to brag? Well, you're out of luck, Shouyou-kun, 'cause I happen to be an asshole, so if you won't do it then I'm just gonna have to gloat the fuck outta this for you. "

"Okay, okay, I get it," said Hinata, swatting at Atsumu and gently shaking out of his grip. When Atsumu finally let his hands slide from where they'd been gripping Hinata's shoulders, they both opened their mouths to speak at the same time again.

"Shouyou-kun, I—"

"Atsumu-san—"

Bearing the full brunt of the searing afternoon sun, Atsumu felt exceptionally dull-witted. "No, you go first, Shouyou-kun."

"All right," said Hinata. "I brought it up because I was just wondering—and you don't have to do it if you don't have time or anything, but I was wondering if you could help me with the tryout video?" He looked uncharacteristically nervous when he asked, fiddling around with his fingertips, picking at his neatly cut and filed nails.

"Yeah," Atsumu said hoarsely. Desperately, he wanted to take Hinata's hands back in his own to put a stop to their movement. "Yeah, of course I'll do it, Shouyou-kun, you ain't even gotta ask."

"Thank you," breathed Hinata in a sigh of relief. Silly Shouyou-kun. As if Atsumu could have ever said no. "I just—yeah. You know. It would mean a lot. If I could just hit another couple of your tosses, and send that over to the recruitment team."

He didn't say, for good luck. They both knew very well luck had nothing to do with anything. And if it wasn't luck, then it was only the unceasing pull of gravity, the lines on his palm intertwining unmistakably with the panels that crisscross the surface of the ball.

"Yeah," Atsumu croaked, his speech ability apparently reduced to monosyllabics. "Yeah, 'course."

"Great," said Hinata, before clearing his throat. "Great. Thanks so much. What were you gonna say before this, Atsumu-san?"

"Oh, just…" Atsumu swallowed, hard. "Nothing much, really. Nowhere near as important as this. Shouyou-kun, I'm gonna be your own personal herald when you break the news to everyone else. No gettin' around it."

A layer of pink dusting his cheeks was all Atsumu could see of Hinata's expression before he turned and gestured for Atsumu to wade back out to the water as well. Led by the last scorching rays of late-afternoon sunshine before the slanting dusk, it was all Atsumu could do to follow.

Here was the thing. It seemed that when things came down to it, Hinata had always been a step ahead of him.

Even now, though he'd grown leaps and bounds from the absorbed, borderline reckless player he used to be, Atsumu could still remember exactly what it had felt like to get so swiftly and unequivocally knocked out of the tournament. What it had felt like to watch Osamu hit the ball straight into Kageyama and Hinata's waiting palms, after pulling off what they'd both been certain was a perfect back-row quick, completely faultless in its technicity. The realization that Hinata and Kageyama's speed and cooperation had been enough, not only to continuously pull off plays that slipped right through the cracks of Inarizaki's defense, but also to preemptively recognize his and Osamu's last desperate attempt at redeeming a losing game.

The realization, at the end of the day, that Hinata had always taken care to go the extra step above and beyond, in the never-ending push-and-pull chase for evolution.

It was only Hinata, whose resilience and desperation for growth was not limited solely to sprouting and flourishing through the cracks of barren concrete. Even through the sinking, amorphous viscosity of dry sand, he was the one always looking for ways to craft his own oasis, his own stepping stones so he could continue climbing to even further heights. 

Had Atsumu not always known this? The irony, that for the very reason why he was so drawn to Hinata in the first place, he was about to slip right through Atsumu's grasp. And there was some part of him, despite everything ugly simmering in the depths of his stomach, that was even perfectly fine with letting himself be a constituent of that stepping stone for Hinata, that transient traction, so long as Atsumu could still look up and see him take to the open skies. Because who was Atsumu, to try and cage him in mid-flight? 

So, well—there might have been a version of them out there somewhere who would've had the luxury of kissing here on the beach, backlit by sun beaming down on sand, engulfed by the lazy, lethargic breeze.

Neither he nor Hinata had ever been the type to leave anything in a half-promised state of completion, though. Along with his pride, Atsumu swallowed an entire mouthful of seawater to dive back down under the waves, his eyes screwed shut.

The thing about saltwater, Atsumu recalled, was that one taste of it could only make the sensation of thirst even more pronounced. The blue of the sea was becoming rapidly and starkly indistinguishable from the blue of the sky—and so, into the waves Atsumu sunk. 

±

Six weeks after Inarizaki had been knocked out of the first Haruko round by Karasuno in a surprise upset, Atsumu was called into the coaches' office and pronounced next year's captain. By the time he was officially handed the number 1 jersey during practice two weeks after that, he'd already taken enough time to rehearse his team-friendly reaction in front of their shared bathroom mirror that Osamu had threatened to break down the door and place the blame entirely on him.

Atsumu was long past the point of expecting any real response from Osamu about it, whether it was going to be one of support or indignation. Outside of bathroom hogging-related discontent, Osamu largely just maintained an air of bored disinterest.

"We all knew it'd be you, idiot," he'd shot lazily at Atsumu after practice. It sounded far less like an expression of persisting belief in Atsumu's merit, and more like he didn't have it in him give a fuck either way.

Atsumu, like always, thought he was full of shit, and didn't hesitate to tell Osamu so. Still, he wished Osamu would fight back sometimes, since half the satisfaction of having something came from fighting tooth and nail to defend the right of keeping it for himself. He'd always been selfish like that, ever quick to jump onto the defensive. Throughout this entire exchange, Osamu did not glance up from his protein bar even once.

In the end, Atsumu sought Kita out for advice. The result of a panicked decision he made while zoning out in statistics, running through a mental list of every captain he could name in his decade-long volleyball career, and realizing he couldn't find a single quality he possessed in common with them outside of being good at playing volleyball.

"You wanted to speak to me, Atsumu?"

They were meeting in the boys' locker room, for some reason. The mini-gazebo in the courtyard would've been nice, but Atsumu couldn't think of a place to ask Kita to meet him that didn't seem like he was about to confess to and be rejected by him. So—locker room. Volleyball. Common ground. From ex-captain, to captain-hopeful. 

What Atsumu had mostly failed to factor in was that he couldn't very well just ask Kita how to be captain and expect anything other than a pointed stare for a response. If Atsumu had learned anything from the past two years of training with him, it was that Kita was direct and perpetually unruffled, never showing up anywhere without being perfectly prepared for the occasion. It felt almost a bit shameful now, that Atsumu could in no way say the same for himself.

"Uh. Yes? Well, you see—well, I'm not sure if you heard or not, but—"

Kita just looked patiently at Atsumu with his head cocked a neat thirty degrees to his right. "I did hear from Aran-kun that Coach made ya captain for next year, yes," he offered placidly, always Atsumu's saving grace. "Congratulations."

"Thanks, Kita-san," Atsumu mumbled, scratching the back of his head. "But—that ain't why I came to speak to you, just to tell you that! I guess I just—well, I guess I don't really know what I'd be doing, in general," he finished lamely. 

"You wanna ask me for help," said Kita, smooth gaze and words piercing through Atsumu like he had X-ray vision of the mind, "'cause you dunno what to do, and you feel like you've yet to earn your place in a position of leadership?"

Fuck. "Um. No? I mean, well—I just meant, like, how am I supposed to handle the club applications and tryouts and stuff?"

Atsumu finally mustered up enough courage to look up from the stance of being chastised he semi-automatically assumed just from being around Kita-san, and was surprised to see a small smile tugging the ends of his mouth into a slight, precise parabolic curve.

"Atsumu," said Kita. "D'you know what I did when I was made captain last year?"

"No," Atsumu lied, recalling the image of Kita staring down at the #1 jersey in his hands with tears streaming down his cheeks. Seeing that kind of mortality in Kita had been unnerving in a way he had been wildly emotionally unequipped for, and still didn't entirely know what to make of.

"I was much the same as you, in a lotta ways," answered Kita.

"What?" Atsumu asked dumbly. "No way."

"I wondered for a while if it might be a waste, to name me captain when it was obvious I ain't gonna be continuing volleyball after high school, or even be making the starting lineup. I thought about concedin' to Aran-kun instead, but he's always deserved far more than a position by deferral or default, hasn't he? But since then, I've learned there's far more to captaincy than any single attribute like that. Lemme ask you this, Atsumu: if Coach thought leadership and on-court ability were interchangeable as skillsets," he said, "do you think we'd be here havin' this conversation right now?" 

"I couldn't imagine this year with anyone 'cept you as captain, Kita-san," Atsumu blurted out fiercely. Loyally, as if fired off purely on instinct. "You're the best captain I've ever had."

"Sure," Kita agreed easily, still sporting a light smile. "Thanks, for sayin' that. I do imagine it'd be difficult to retrospectively picture somebody else takin' my place." 

"So what're you sayin'?"

"I'm sayin' that Coach doesn't just make these decisions for no reason," he said mildly.

"So what, I'm just supposed to go on some kinda quest and eventually unlock how to be a captain on my own?"

"You'd be surprised, I think," said Kita, and continued to smile his cryptic, private smile, like he was Mona Lisa, the omniscient keeper to all secrets and wisdoms of the world.

He didn't divulge any more information if he had it, but faced with Kita's muted faith, Atsumu decided that was maybe totally fine. If nothing else, he'd never had any trouble understanding devotion or commitment.

If nothing else, Atsumu thought, he still always knew volleyball. He looked down at the bench, where Kita had once left him a container with umeboshi and some soothing tea, and thought that must be the vanishing point where everything would eventually converge.

±

"'Tsumu, the other guys don't like you."

"... So?"

"..."

"..." 

"Y'know, I've decided I don't ever wanna be like you. I'm gonna be nice to folks. And I'm gonna live in peace with 'em."

"What the hell are you goin' on about? Listen, I was thinkin' about that crazy block Aran-kun and his teammate pulled off today, and I was thinkin' we could maybe also try something like—"

±

For better or for worse, Atsumu's captaincy imposter syndrome crisis mode was abruptly interrupted a week later; Osamu mentioned offhandedly, in the same casual way he usually let Atsumu know he planned to take a detour to the bakery on the way home from school, that he was planning to quit volleyball after they graduated from Inarizaki. To go into the food industry.

Three made a pattern of Osamu resolutely diverging from Atsumu's mental five-year plan for volleyball. Atsumu stomped into his room, the door slamming shut behind him, dove into the bottom bunk, and shoved his comforter over his head.

Unfortunately, he couldn't even have the space to himself and sulk to his heart's content. Not five minutes later, Osamu trudged in and climbed up into his bunk, because they still shared a room, because their parents had evicted them both from the living room couch for the remainder of the day, because being unleashed into this world with a twin stuck to his side was the genesis of all of Atsumu's problems. 

Five minutes passed with Osamu noisily flipping through a magazine on his bunk, Atsumu pointedly and resolutely staying silent on his. 

"Look," Osamu finally said, letting out a loud, annoyed sigh and closing his magazine with a dramatic schliff. "I'm sure we can just fight it out like normal. Sticks and stones. Break each other's bones. No need to resort to feelings. Couldja please put the face away? Thanks."

Fuck you, mouthed Atsumu venomously into his pillow, because he was still pointedly and resolutely staying silent.

"Are you crying?" asked Osamu after a few more silent minutes, peering down at Atsumu's bunk. 

"No, dipshit," snarled Atsumu, turning his back against the wall instead. He really, truly, was not crying, thank you very much, and he knew that Osamu knew he was not crying. Belatedly, he also realized that Osamu had just used that to manipulate him into breaking his self-imposed vow of silence.

A resounding smug pause from the top bunk.

"Fuck off, I still ain't talkin' to you."

"Whatever." Osamu leaned further over the railing to nail the Atsumu-shaped lump of blankets in the face with the magazine he'd been reading.

±

That night he slept fitfully, dreaming of scenarios so mundane he didn't recognize them for dreams until he was hit with the blinding divergence from reality. He dreamt of early morning serving drills with Aran. Of racing Osamu in the dark to catch the early-as-shit first bus. Of Kita, knuckles white with force where he was clutching the #1 jersey. Of, inexplicably, a kinetic blur of orange, whole and undivided by the fragmented squares of the volleyball net.

In the morning, Atsumu woke to a sleep-crumpled copy of February's Volleyball Monthly issue smushed in his face, open to the feature on Ichibayashi for taking home the national championship, and thought blearily that the only thing demarcating memory from dream must be how badly he wished for it to be true.

±

The following week was one marked by shame, annoyance, and a perpetual storm cloud hanging over Atsumu's head, punctuated by rash outbursts before it finally culminated in another full-blown gym brawl with Osamu. Vicious but short-lived, they'd broken apart voluntarily before anyone could get Kita-san to get Coach. A sign of growth, probably, but Atsumu was still too pissed to dwell too much on that.

"Toldja so," said Osamu smugly, breaking the silence first on the walk home. "I toldja you're not built for whatever you've been trying to do, didn't I."

"Fuck off," responded Atsumu sourly, wincing as the movement agitated the bruise forming on his cheek. With the last of residual anger from the past week, he sent one last half-hearted kick aimed at Osamu's shins, which he dodged with ease. The terse iciness between them had long since shattered from the moment Atsumu threw the first punch earlier in practice, but their mutual challenge, fuelled in equal parts by spite and hope, was a page he would bookmark and return to for a long time after.

I think, came an echo of Osamu's voice from before Atsumu set off to Tokyo by himself, smooth and matter-of-fact and capable of mass destruction, that when it comes down to it, it's just that ya love volleyball a tiny bit more than I do.

A fact of volleyball: as much as he couldn't let it drop, the ball was never made to be held. That this was a sport delineated by impact, an exercise defined through the forces of connection, movements designed as ways to fight against inertia and gravity.

It was the difference between two arms and ten fingers that would end up deciding everything. It was what would make the difference between all-Japan youth camp setter and leader of a powerhouse team.

It was because he loved volleyball, simple and sure as the sun was certain to rise from the east every morning. Because volleyball was volleyball was volleyball, and love for Atsumu had always been synonymous with an all-consuming drive for higher, further, more.

"Hey," said Miya Atsumu, eighteen-year-old captain of Inarizaki looking to prove a point, huddled in a circle with his new teammates on the precipice of a vicious rematch against the crows of Karasuno.

A faint echo of something he remembered hearing his first time at a training camp without 'Samu by his side, he grinned, and put his hand out first for the rest of his team to pile onto.

"Let's get out there, and let's show 'em all how much fun we can have playin' some fuckin' volleyball, yeah?"

±

By the end of June, Hinata had emptied the contents of his locker in the MSBY practice gym and left for Brazil, and Atsumu was stuck at the annual JVA sponsors event. Being pushed to the very edges of his sanity after the fourth time someone approached him just to ask about Hinata, he decides to go search for drinks on his own before he does any irreparable damage to his reputation.

"Whoa," Atsumu called out, spotting a familiar figure as he snagged a flute of champagne. "Tobio-kun? How are you?"

In a fitted blazer and a checkered shirt combo complete with a blue tie, Atsumu could admit to himself despite his foul mood that Kageyama really did clean up well when he wanted to. Or, maybe more accurately to this situation, whenever he was forcibly wrangled into a formal dress code by his manager. 

Kageyama nodded in acknowledgement, responding: "Atsumu-san. I've been good. You?"

Really, he didn't even seem stiff at the prospect of forced small talk anymore. In a twistedly nostalgic and strangely protective way, Atsumu felt that he almost ought to be proud.

"I've been good, too," he responded, taking a sip from his champagne. It tasted, predictably despite the overall pretentious glamour typical of JVA events, like shit. "You win any league championship titles lately?" he asked, just to restore the atmospheric karmic balance of friendly competitive assholery within the V. League.

Kageyama raised an eyebrow. Haughty, but lacking any real heat Atsumu knew him to be capable of. "Not since the last four seasons that we won in a row, no," he retorted, steering the conversation successfully and safely out of potentially dangerous sentimental waters. Team effort really was a beautiful thing.

Blessedly, because maybe Atsumu hadn't been totally off the mark about his character back in training camp after all, Kageyama did not point out that for the entire past season he'd been half a planet away in the Italian Super League. The Schweiden Adlers were always a force to be reckoned with—Hoshiumi was still a nuisance in the air, plus Romero had renewed his contract to stay in Japan for a second season—but with both Ushijima and Kageyama gone in their respective foreign leagues, MSBY were able to snag their first V. League championship victory in over five years at the end of the season.

"Yeah." Atsumu coughed a bit awkwardly at the reminder that he never did quite manage to steal the season's title from Kageyama before he left the domestic league. "I didn't think you'd be back in Japan so soon, Tobio-kun."

Kageyama, for his part, just shrugged. "I was going to be back sooner or later anyway, but the SuperLega finishes before V. League, and the JVA wanted me back a bit early."

"Yeah? Well, it's too bad that you just missed Shouyou-kun. His flight out to Brazil was, like, last week," Atsumu felt compelled to add. The triangulated localization of mutual friendships, or something.

"Yeah, I know." There was a semi-permanent scowl fixed on Kageyama's face that seemed to be somewhat of a Pavlovian response to Hinata's name, though Atsumu could never really be sure whether it was the mention of Hinata himself, or the fact that he wasn't here to react to Kageyama's insults in real time. 

"Yeah," he said, before clearing his throat. "Well. Tell me, Tobio-kun, how're they treating you over there? Don't tell me I gotta submit any complaint letters on your behalf, 'cause my Italian ain't nothin' to write home about, I'll tell you that."

"Fine." Kageyama was wearing a serious frown when he answered, though it was one of his micro-frown variants that Atsumu had learned over the years didn't actually indicate any real displeasure. "Italian is hard, though. I think I can mostly understand everyone on the team pretty well at this point, but speaking is still hard sometimes."

"Yeah, I'll bet. Well, how're you liking Rome in general, then? What do they call it over there, the Eternal City?"

"Yeah, something like that," Kageyama said again, plucking a weird-looking hors d'oeuvre from a passing server. "I don't know about eternal or whatever, but it's nice. The food's good enough. I didn't even really start missing konbinis for a while."

Atsumu raised an eyebrow. "Konbinis, huh? It's the small things that really start gettin' to ya, ain't it?" 

He also recalled Hinata saying something similar about his first few months in Rio. That while the whole move had been such an abrupt upending of his entire life, it was the nagging, tiny punctures left by the everyday little mundane things that lingered, right up until he moved back to Japan. From the way Hinata has spoken about the convenience store pork buns he used to eat after practice, Atsumu might be inclined to believe that Sakanoshita Mart was a Michelin three-star restaurant in one of those food magazines Osamu kept a full drawer of. It was nothing like the unique experience of discarding everything familiar in your life to move halfway across the globe, but Atsumu remembered thinking that he could certainly sympathize. 

"Yeah, I guess." Kageyama sounded almost wistful. "I'm glad to be back now, though."

Ah. There it was, the cursed resurfacing feeling of nostalgia, and it seemed like neither of them could escape it today. Because today, for the first time in a very long time, Atsumu looked at Kageyama and saw what he saw when they first met: quiet in his pride, earnest, diligent. Maybe not so much a goody-two-shoes, but still a seriously good kid.

He didn't think for a second he was ever wrong about Kageyama, even when he'd watched him demand everything his spikers could give, the most voracious of which Atsumu would come to know with great interest. Even when together, they snatched what should have been an easy victory for Inarizaki from right under their noses. Even when the Olympics committee had ended up sending him to Rio over Atsumu. Even after all the vicious professional games they'd played as fierce predators of the land and sky. 

"Y'know," he began, feeling the smarmy smile begin to overtake his features, "I'm sure one of the reasons why you've been called back is that the Olympic team selection is coming up."

"It is," Kageyama said tersely.

"Well, I'll have you know I ain't going to lose to you this time, Tobio-kun," he said easily and with an assured finality. 

There was a lot to Kageyama he recognized in himself, Atsumu thought, and the list neither began nor ended with time spent setting the ball to Hinata Shouyou. Demanding. Expectations sky-high for their teammates, higher still for the quality of teamwork that would stitch everything together. A pride that stemmed from the grounded reality of trust and performance, so fierce it was often taken for egoism. Seeing Kageyama grow into his own as a player, from the lonesome middle school King Atsumu had first read about in a blurb stuck in the corner of a Volleyball Monthly page, to world-renowned setter in one of the top world leagues—

It was you lot at Karasuno. Every single one of you, who took Tobio-kun, and showed him that he could get away with whatever he wanted.

Well—perhaps Atsumu could tack an extra thing or two onto that list. Even now with Hinata's glaring absence. A new season was ahead of him, after all, bearing a new title to defend and new horizons to rise to.

Kageyama responded with a terrifyingly easy smile of his own, an entire murder of crows ready to take flight. "Neither will I, Atsumu-san."

"'Course not," snorted Atsumu, pulling Kageyama down to ruffle his hair affectionately like an old auntie at a family function. "C'mon, Tobio-kun. They've gotta be servin' something here that's actually edible, and I'm gonna make you help me find it."

±

At age twenty-four, Hinata is the kind of person who meditates immediately after waking up, meal preps regularly, and owns self-help books. He probably doesn't even need to read them, but he does it anyway.

At age twenty-five, Atsumu is the kind of person who has to put product in his hair immediately after waking up, meal preps only so his nutritionist doesn't murder him in cold blood, and owns self-help books because fuckin' Osamu keeps buying them for him as some kind of sick, extended gag gift. He probably does need to read them, but he still doesn't anyway.

So, naturally, traveling together is kind of a whole ordeal. Osamu leaving the two of them alone last night ended up working more to his benefit than Atsumu's; Hinata keeps to a sleep schedule probably even more strictly than what his parents had enforced as a child, and promptly rolled out his futon as soon as they'd pushed their way through the genkan. Atsumu just played shitty mobile games in the dark until he became so tired he kept dropping his phone on his face.

In the morning, with Osamu already headed back to the storefront ahead of the lunch hour rush, Atsumu finally succeeds in turning off all fifteen of his phone alarms and dragging himself into full consciousness, approximately four hours after Hinata has already finished his entire structured morning routine.

"Good morning, Atsumu-san," Hinata greets when Atsumu emerges. He's actually very intently reading the huge hardback on the history of sneakers Osamu leaves displayed on his coffee table. Atsumu is sure that Osamu only even bought it for decoration and trying to convince his guests he has interests, and Hinata is definitely the first person ever to open it.

"Morning." His voice cracks, because he only just dragged himself out of bed three minutes ago, so he clears his throat hastily and tries again. "Morning. You look—lovely," says Atsumu, who apparently at the tender age of twenty-five has suddenly decided to turn ninety-three. He silently thanks every deity and spirit there is under the sun that Osamu isn't here to witness this, lest Atsumu be continually mocked for the rest of eternity.

"Thanks!" Hinata says brightly, benevolently not commenting on Atsumu's geriatric slip of the tongue. "Natsu just texted saying she and her teammates made it back home. That's great. So—" he closes the coffee table book, standing up and stretching a little, "what are we going to do on our last day before we head back, Atsumu-san?"

"I don't know," Atsumu admits, picking up his jacket and heading over to the genkan with Hinata. "I didn't really have plans or anythin'. I guess we can just sort of hang around here at 'Samu's for a bit, maybe bother him at work, then we can see if there's anything we wanna do around the city? I dunno, I'm still here, like, most of the year, so it's up to you what we wanna do, really," he babbles.

"Okay," Hinata grins and finishes looping the double knot with his shoelaces before standing up. "In that case, there's just one thing I want to do before we leave."

±

"Is this where you lived?" Atsumu asks. Through the constant buzzing of cicadas, he peers at the sunlight filtering through the cracks left by gaps between thick foliage, looking around and squinting at the surrounding apartment buildings. 

"Yes," responds Hinata, looking around at the gates that barricade the neighbouring cluster of buildings like he's searching for something.

"Why, did you leave somethin' here before you left?"

"Not exactly," he answers absently, walking around in circles for a bit, searching the walls up and down.

Other than the gateway entrance that leads into it from the main street, the danchi apartment block Hinata used to live in is enclosed on three sides by different residential units. In the centre where they're currently standing is a small mini-garden and biking storage unit, which Hinata ducks behind swiftly. 

"Uh—well. Anythin' I can help with?" Atsumu offers, feeling overtly out of place just standing there. 

"It should be fine, but I'm just—if you see a really lazy black cat lying around here somewhere—"

"A cat?" Atsumu echoes before joining Hinata, crouched to the ground together by the back of the the bike shed. "You came here lookin' for a cat?"

"Yeah," Hinata says. "She was just a stray who used to wander around the neighbourhood when I was living here, and I saw her around a lot when I'd be coming home from practice. I think she did actually probably belong to someone who lives nearby, but I've just never been able to figure out who. I lived on the second floor, and sometimes she'd show up on my balcony and hang out for a while."

"Aww. Well then, what's her name? Maybe she'll come if you call."

"I don't actually know," Hinata admits, looking a little chagrined at the fact. "I never saw a collar or anything. A lot of the people around the neighbourhood call her by a lot of different names. I've never really called her anything myself, though."

"Oh? What names did you hear?"

"Like… Oh, let me think," Hinata's face scrunches up in concentration as he tries to recall. Very cutely, if Atsumu might add some commentary. A part of him kind of expires on the spot, but with some colossal effort he lugs himself back to pay full attention to what Hinata's saying next. "Charcoal was definitely something I remember overhearing. Nobunaga, for some reason? And the neighbourhood kids would just call her Neko-chan, I think."

"Ha. Cute."

"Yeah." Hinata sighs, leaning his weight back on his heels so that he's hugging his knees, leaning back against the shade provided by the shed. "I kept thinking about her when I was gone, so I just kind of wanted to see her again. Was this dumb? Maybe someone actually adopted her while I was gone. That would've been great, actually, she—"

"Hey, hey," Atsumu hurries to say. A weak, weak man he is, unable to stand even the slightest hint of dejection on Hinata's face. "Look, it's the middle of the day, I'm sure she's just around here somewhere, probably takin' a nap. Cats are lazy like that, right? Why don't we leave for a bit to go get some treats for her, come back later and then try again?"

"You're right," Hinata says slowly, contemplating. "I think I mostly only saw her later in the afternoon or when I'd be coming home after practice."

"See?"

Atsumu stands up straight and offers a hand to hoist Hinata up, too. Hinata takes it with a grateful smile, dusting off the nonexistent dirt from his shorts before saying: "Okay, thanks, Atsumu-san. Let's go!"

±

"See, wasn't this an amazing idea," boasts Atsumu. "We've got food for the cat, and we've got food for us. Everybody's happy, no one loses." Hinata laughs his wind chime of a laugh, agreeing. 

"Cat!" Hinata exclaims when they enter the apartment block again. Atsumu follows his line of vision to see the offending cat, all black except for prominent white whiskers and paws, perched majestically atop the balcony of one of the apartments directly across from the block entrance like she's appraising all visitors that dare intrude on her land. 

"Oh my god," Hinata laughs as the cat jumps down and trots toward him, crouching down to extend a hand with some of the treats he'd gotten at the nearby Lawson. "I'm pretty sure that was my old unit she was just sitting in."

The cat stops directly in front of Hinata's hand, gently giving the palm of his outstretched hand a headbutt in greeting before ducking down to eat her treats.

"She must've missed you too, then," remarks Atsumu, reaching out gingerly to stroke the cat's fur as she continues eating out of Hinata's hand. "Here, have some of this, too." He offers the pack of seaweed he'd purchased back at Lawson.

"Can cats eat that?" Hinata asks, looking away from the cat for the first time while he scratches the underside of her chin, the cat purring lowly in contentment.

"Yeah, I remember readin' somewhere that seaweed's actually kinda like a superfood for cats and dogs," says Atsumu. It's not technically a lie, since he did look it up very speedily on his phone while Hinata was in another aisle looking for drinks, silently wishing that he'd somehow had the foresight to just swipe some of Osamu's stock before they left. In any case, the cat seems content to accept his offering with ease.

"Hey, you said people give her all kinds of different names?" Atsumu asks after a period of silence. The cat has, at this point, finished eating both Hinata and Atsumu's offerings, and is now laid down with her limbs languidly stretched out on the sidewalk. Hinata hums in vague affirmation as he reaches out to scratch her stomach.

"Then I think I'm gonna give her a name, too," announces Atsumu grandly. "Since you didn't all this time, and I think he deserves one more from us. Leave our own mark, or whatever. So humour me for a second here, Shouyou-kun."

"Sure," says Hinata, propping his hand up on one chin to look up at Atsumu. "Let's hear it."

"Jackasuke," he says. "Y'know, after the MSBY mascot. 'Cause, y'know, she's got black fur all over, and you hung out with her the most when you were still playing with us."

"Jackasuke," Hinata repeats softly, his smile widening, before turning back to ask the cat: "You like that?" 

When her response comes in the form of purring into Hinata's hand and headbutting him again, a little more insistently this time, Hinata laughs. "Seems like she does." He looks back up at Atsumu, beaming. "Not a bad idea, Atsumu-san." 

"'Course," says Atsumu. "Now this guy's had an official naming ceremony." His throat feels dry. When he reaches out to pet Jackasuke again, she seems to have warmed up to Atsumu considerably more. The wonders of food, really.

"I never ended up coming up with a name for her, because she would just show up and hang out on my balcony whenever she wanted, you know? So I never had to call her anything," Hinata says again while they both sit down by the curb with Jackasuke, nodding at and greeting the passersby coming in and out of their apartments. "But, you know, this feels right. For her, and also for…" he trails off for a while, still absent-mindedly stroking Jackasuke's fur.

"For?" Atsumu prompts.

"For me coming back here," Hinata finally says when, sending another grin up at Atsumu through his lashes. As if to consciously shake himself out of a reverie, he looks back down to scratch behind Jackasuke's ears. "Like you said. She's finally got a name. Thanks so much for coming here with me, Atsumu-san."

"Nah." Atsumu crouches down too so he's eye-level with Hinata, and picks up a clover he finds in the grass close to their shoes. He finds out it's only actually got three leaves when he holds it up to inspect it, but he was expecting as much when he plucked it anyway. "Don't even mention it, Shouyou-kun."

±

During the V. League off-season, the MSBY practice gym still remains open to be used frequently by the members for general training and condition upkeep. Since Atsumu's been feeling bold and drunk on nostalgia this entire trip, and eating too much of Osamu's cooking within a specific timeframe always makes him a little stupid, he turns to Hinata and asks: "Yo, Shouyou-kun, wanna come break into the gym with me, for old times' sake?"

Hinata laughs. "I don't think we can call it breaking in if you have the access codes to the building."

"It counts as breakin' in if we're there when we ain't supposed to be! C'mon, live a little, Shouyou-kun. I know we're meant to be on break 'til tomorrow, but personally I'm gettin' a little antsy on, like. Volleyball withdrawal."

"If you say so," says Hinata, smiling easily up at Atsumu. "Yeah, sure. I'd love to go. For old times' sake."

Instead of trying to wait for the unreliable bus schedule during rush hour and then still have to spend three eternities sitting through traffic, they decide to walk the rest of the way to the gym. It's not far at all from where Hinata used to live, though it's in the opposite direction from Atsumu's own apartment, which he's been subletting to a local university student since he was going to be in Tokyo for most of V. League off-season preparing for the Olympics. 

Atsumu punches in the entrance code and pushes the door open as soon as the lock beeps and flashes green. 

"I know it hasn't actually been that long, but it even mostly smells the same as I remember," says Hinata as they walk into the locker room. 

Atsumu raises an eyebrow. "Like what? Sweat, and chemical shit that's supposed to cover up the smell of sweat?"

Hinata laughs, lifting his duffel bag over his shoulders to set it on the bench. "Yeah, I guess that's pretty much it."

They get changed quickly in amicable silence. Though all the walking they'd done around the city today was a considerable warm-up in itself, neither of them can afford the risk of injury this close to the biggest tournament of their lives. Together, they take their warm-ups even more seriously than they always did under watchful the eyes of Coach Foster or Hibarida, before finally making their way out to the familiar court.

No matter how exhilarating it always is to play with Hinata, who can absolutely be considered one of the most versatile and creative players in the entire world right now, there's always something distinctly different about pulling off the minus-tempo quick. World-shaking in its straightforward and unwavering conviction. The meteoric sonic whoosh and boom of the ball slamming down on linoleum floor that usually precedes any reaction from the crowd, like the delay between lightning and thunder.

"How'd that one feel, Shouyou-kun?" Atsumu asks as the ball lands on the other side of the net in a neat, clean line shot. He always makes sure to ask, during practice—Kita always used to say that dull repetition accomplishes nothing if it's only further entrenching existing mistakes.

Hinata pauses for a moment to consider, inclining his head toward the ceiling. His face is always so expressive; every emotion always displayed with 150% neon clarity like the LED billboards in Osaka that always make Atsumu feel a little dizzy at night.

"Same as always," Hinata decides. "So, great! But, you know, I always think we could make it faster. Maybe if…" He pauses, considering, hand rubbing thoughtfully at his chin.

"What, you tryin' to break the sound barrier here?" In spite of himself, Atsumu laughs. 

Once they'd all started training with the national team, there was a lot of time spent in the initial weeks dedicated to parsing out the differences between Atsumu's version of the quick with Kageyama's, comparing weaknesses and strengths. 

"You see?" Hibarida paused the split-screen tablet and set both videos to the slowest speed possible, pausing when Hinata's palm first made impact with the ball in the quick they'd filmed with Kageyama. "The difference is almost negligible, since they're both still significantly faster than the standard of our typical opponents. I think Miya is a bit faster in terms of pure speed, but Kageyama tends to still have a bit more precision in his aim. So while Miya's still technically faster, Kageyama is the one who usually ends up getting the ball to Hinata just a little bit before."

It's a quick that's advantageous specifically because the straight line drawn from the setter's palm to Hinata's awaiting point of contact. Speed is obviously important, but Atsumu learned years ago it wasn't everything; the closest distance between two points is still the direct straight line.

"Maybe I am," Hinata responds, cocking an eyebrow. And there it is, the perennial extension of challenge: I can do it, but only if you can keep up with me. "Why, you think you're done?"

Atsumu shakes his head, reaching into the cart for another ball and spinning it in between his palms, always refamiliarizing himself with the surface of each individual ball before he feels he can start playing with it.

"You're insane, Shouyou-kun," he declares, stilling the ball to point it directly at Hinata. The fluorescent gym ceiling lights glint off the reflective material on the side his shirt, making his skin appear crystalline. "But I've always known that. 'Course I'll do it. What kinda question."

And Hinata, like always, laughs in kind at his jests. They both take water breaks shortly after, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder by the taped sidelines of the gym that had been theirs for two whole seasons, knees knocking clumsily against each other. Atsumu thinks that getting used to no longer having Hinata as his spiker and letting it go are still two entirely different things.

And maybe it's the adrenaline of being back in the gym after a couple days off, or the paint fumes in the perennially-under-construction lobby are finally irreparably damaging his brain chemistry—but the privilege of getting to send the ball up for Hinata reminds him inexplicably of his old high school motto. Maybe it's true that memories have no continued place in his life when they've already culminated as a renewed a part of him. Still, what a blessing it is, that Atsumu gets to still send the ball up for Hinata after all these years. A momentous honour, that they're both still getting to chase the same shared dreams from their past.

With a sudden moment of absolute clarity as they return to the court, Atsumu's line of vision, his ten fingers, the ball and its trajectory—each of them aligns perfectly with the rest, all leading inexorably to Hinata's expectant form mid-jump. 

±

They play well into the sunset, the orange rays of sunshine diffracting at the windows and casting distinctly slanted silhouettes. When they both decide to call it a day and head back to the locker room, Atsumu can't shake the strange feeling that he's on the precipice of something huge, like he's about to either clear a major mountain peak or straight up walk off the side of a cliff.

However that must be reflecting on his face, Hinata notices. "What's up, Atsumu-san?"

"Oh, y'know, just." Atsumu sits on the bench to the changing room so that he's looking up at Hinata. He's already starting to feel the tell-tale ache in his thighs, even though he'd just now taken a foam roller to it. He's definitely gonna have to do it again before he goes to bed. "Thinkin' about what's gonna happen, next month at the Olympics."

Hinata laughs, reaching into one of the lockers for his gym bag, the one he'd unofficially claimed as his during his second week of practice as an official member of MSBY. "Yeah? Why?"

"'Cause I honestly wasn't thinking about it twenty minutes ago, like at all," Atsumu explains to him. "It honestly just felt like we were hangin' back after regular training again. Aiming for the V. League title."

"Mhm." Hinata hums. "Do you remember your first championship?" 

"You remember yours?" Atsumu shoots back.

"Of course I do," Hinata answers. They'd stayed mostly at the top of the league rankings in Hinata's first season ever since that first game, until the Adlers managed to claim their revenge in the finals. That game had concluded after five gruelling sets and a deuce dragged well into the 20s, and the resulting loss had weighed heavy on all of them, until it hadn't. Like some resounding answer, they managed to steal the title right back the next year in a triumphant victory, right before Hinata announced he was going to Brazil.

And the year after that, they managed to defend their title, even without their greatest decoy.

"Did you watch us? A few months ago?" Atsumu asks the question he's been itching to ask since the moment they took home the trophy.

"Yes," Hinata tells him, pulling his sweaty practice shirt over his head from the back. "I even woke up extra early on my day off from practice."

Atsumu resolutely doesn't look at Hinata's now exposed chest. He consciously reminds himself where Hinata's eyes are, anatomically speaking. Then, he decides that the entire general face area is probably also too dangerous, and looks past Hinata entirely to talk instead at his new #10 Team Japan jersey hanging inside his locker. Atsumu kind of wants to ask it: How early did you wake up? He tries to do the mental math on the São Paulo-Osaka time difference to see if it was before Hinata would've been up anyway. He can't remember if Brazil does daylight savings. He accepts after a few moments that this has failed miserably. He makes a mental note to search it up later, as if it'll tell him something real.

"Good," is the response Atsumu finally gives instead. "Could you tell? We ain't helpless without you."

Hinata cocks his head to one side, seeing straight past the callousness in Atsumu's words that would likely have made any other person bristle.

"You still have me," he says. Under Hinata's level gaze, Atsumu wonders if the ugliness that he's felt accumulating under his skin is at all visible.

"No," Atsumu blurts suddenly, feeling some tension explode in his chest. "I don't."

Because sometime between the first moment he solidified his position as setter and the last time he fought Osamu in the Inarizaki gym, Atsumu came to realize the depth of his own greed.

When finally he graduated high school, Atsumu had a whole slew of offers from V. League teams, just waiting to be chosen. Recruitment representatives told him his track record and status on the youth team rendered him eligible to skip the tedious preliminary tryouts, that he only had to attend the final round to see how well he played with the current roster before decisions were finalized. But wink wink, just-between-you-and-me-Miya-kun, he would pretty much be guaranteed a starting position straight away. And though he had since made peace with Osamu's departure in his own way, and while he would have rathered dunking his freshly bleached head in vat full of pure chlorine than admit this even in the privacy of his own mind, Atsumu found himself at a loss, trying to navigate a major crossroad on his own.

"It's not like Osamu's dead," Suna had pointed out crossly while they were both cleaning up after practice. "He's in the locker room right now. You both live in the same room. Under the same roof. There is literally nothing stopping you from still talking to him about it."

When Atsumu didn't immediately respond, he hastened to add: "Okay, you have personal issues that are stopping you from still talking to him about it. Now I've helped you realize it, you're welcome, please get over them expeditiously on your own so you can stop talking to me about it."

"What 'bout you, then?" Atsumu asked, ignoring the rest.

"What about me?"

"I know you've got offers, too."

"Wow." Suna sneered, but Atsumu knew he didn't mean it. "So eager to stick with me beyond graduation, Atsumu?"

He locked the supply closet door behind him before turning to Atsumu, who was still looking at him in stubborn silence, and letting out a deeply resigned sigh.

"Okay, fine. I'm going to be signing with EJP Raijin next month."

"Holy fuckin' shit."

"If the final tryouts go well."

"And you didn't think to tell us?"

"Why would you have to know this?"

"You're supposed to tell your teammates things, Suna!" Atsumu crossed his arms. "Aran-kun told us last year as soon as he got his offer."

"Well, Aran-kun—"

"And at the very least, you should be keeping your captain in the loop," Atsumu added haughtily. 

Suna snorted in disbelief. "Yeah, okay, sure. Well, wasn't I doing that just now? But either way, I'm not gonna tell you what to do. We both know I'm shit at giving advice, and I think you already know exactly what you want to do. You just want someone to tell you that it's not a terrible idea."

Jeez. "Fine. Well, are ya gonna?"

"No," Suna said resolutely. "Why would I do that?" For a moment, he looked up at the gym ceiling as if hoping a meteor would spontaneously crash through the concrete beams and crush them both in the rubble. When it didn't, he closed his eyes and sighed again. "I think you know what's best for yourself and what you need to do. And you weren't a totally shitty captain this year, so I think your own judgment is probably fine. Even if you could never measure up to Kita-san and Aran-san in a million years."

Atsumu grinned. A back-handed compliment from Suna was a compliment all the same. "Gotcha. Thanks, Sunarin."

And that night, he went home to dig out his drawer stuffed full of pamphlets and various recruitment business cards.

Maybe it was that Atsumu always preferred seeking out that which was out of his immediate reach. His gaze skipped over all the teams for which he'd be guaranteed a starting position to land on the MSBY Black Jackals website, who afforded him no promises except the sleek onyx logo accented with gold.

Then, the black jersey became his after rigorous rounds of tryouts commuting back and forth from Osaka, and it finally felt as if he'd earned every bit of it—the letters "MIYA" printed in vinyl, the claw marks underpinned by a number that was his very own. When that same team also brought Hinata back into his life a few years later, Atsumu hadn't felt like it was either fate or serendipity. 

It was clear from the moment Hinata walked into the final tryouts for shortlisted candidates—in order to earn his place here in the MSBY gym, he had never stopped chasing or growing for a second. From the stories he heard about it afterwards, he could recognize that Hinata's newly sprouted wings were a product of gritting, harshly foreign realities. Of the same hunger Atsumu had always known was intrinsic to him. At the same time, though, he could sense a restless flightiness in Hinata, that even the nation's first division and MSBY could have been nothing more than a stepping stone, a brief steady mantle on which to rest before he continued onwards to higher peaks.

Hinata being drafted to MSBY felt like a whispered fulfilment of a wish, getting to the other side of a promise, the first breath of crisp spring air. While it might have seemed like Atsumu was the one waiting for Hinata to join him at the top of the V. League, he's always resigned himself to a certain truth, that the true distance between them would always have Atsumu chasing after Hinata instead of the other way around.

Neither of them had ever been the type to stay complacent where they were, so when he saw Hinata off at Osaka station before he took the Shinkansen to Narita for his flight—Atsumu watched Hinata disappear into the gates, steeled himself at the thought of the next season laid out ahead of him, and thought they would both be all right.

So yes, Miya Atsumu has always been greedy. It's a fortune traded perfectly through irony that he would have spent so long among a team represented by voracious carnivores, wild animals unleashed upon the V. League, brandishing sharp claws and fangs. But despite the hunger, despite the sustained desperation, he's never had so much audacious gall as to stake claim to something he couldn't tangibly say that he has earned. Osamu has taught him that. His teammates have taught him that. His own captaincy has taught him that.

Hinata has taught him that. 

You still have me. Atsumu swallows.

"You—I could never take you away from everyone else, Shouyou-kun." Hyakuzawa. Ushijima. Bokuto. The fucking YouTuber/CEO/vaguely-rich-guy-who-sponsors-Hinata he'd seen hang around at various JVA events. The elusive Japanese-born Argentinian setter, with whom Atsumu had seen Hinata pose for vaguely incriminating beachside selfies. Everybody he's ever seen Hinata greet by name at post-game meetups. Kageyama. "What kinda person do you think I am?"

"What's that even supposed to mean?" It's neither the confusion or anger Atsumu would have expected—Hinata looks genuinely incredulous. 

Atsumu runs a hand quickly through his hair impatiently. He takes a deep breath and thinks, the way he does frequently before most questionable decisions in his life, fuck it.

"You—I don't think you realize the hold you have over people, Shouyou-kun. You're incredible. You made me realize I'm not—I'm not someone who could just be happy being a buffer to that, Shouyou-kun.

"I know you. You're so much. You're everything. And I know me, and I know if I had anything more than what you share with everyone else I'd want everything. And I don't know that I can live up to—to you," he finishes lamely.

Atsumu feels the unnamed ugliness finally transform and take shape until the bile of dread bubbles up in his stomach, clawing up to constrict his throat. He swallows all of it down in one big gulp, and refuses to meet the earnest look he knows he'd find in Hinata's bright eyes.

"Is that true?" asks Hinata. He's being exceedingly gentle. Atsumu thinks the soft impact of his voice that usually carries so much bright conviction could shatter him beyond repair. "You make me sound like some kind of—like I have some kind of monopoly on being nice, you know? Like it's something you're incapable of. Honestly though, Atsumu-san—I think I understand what you mean and what you're trying to say, but I just think—even if that were true, would it be so bad?"

"What?" Atsumu can't tell if it's still the panicked, dreadful bile scraping up against his throat or the sinews of his own heart.

"That you know me the way you think everyone knows me. Is it really such a bad thing," Hinata asks, "the fact that you look at me and you can see all of who I am?"

Atsumu finally summons a morsel of courage to meet Hinata's eyes, just as impossibly and blazingly piercing in his conviction as it had been when Atsumu had first stood with him, separated only by the width of a mesh net. At once it's as if he can hear them say, crystal clear: I see you just as you are, Miya Atsumu, same as you saw me back then. Not as one of the freak Karasuno first-years, but me, Hinata Shouyou, just as I was.

Atsumu sees him at sixteen, seventeen, twenty-two, twenty-five, compounded into one incredible monster of a being, compounded into one Hinata Shouyou. Mind whirring in overdrive, he's again reminded of his high school motto, and all of a sudden he can see a glaring flaw, the reason why Kita had expressed having a problem with it all those years ago. If he's got no need for memories, if everything he needs is in the here and now of his muscles and mind, then how is his future meant to slot in?

How does he account for the fierce glint in Hinata's eyes, every bit as searing and arresting as it had been as a teenager on the orange court, as it has been here in the MSBY practice gym, as he's sure it'll be in every set they've yet to play on the world stage?

What comes next, if this moment, too, will soon be catalogued only in shared memory? 

Maybe the concept of atemporality was something reserved for the fatalistic, fast-paced ideals of adolescence. But here, looking at Hinata, Atsumu realizes—

Maybe there's neither a mountain peak nor a cliff. Maybe it's here that Atsumu sees Hinata in his entirety, somewhere in the bridged territory between selfish and selfless he has come to known as love, and the only thing he can think is—just you, Hinata Shouyou. Just as you are now. Just as you'll always be. 

The smile on Hinata's face remains warm. Infinitely inviting. He's looking right at Atsumu.

"In the end, Atsumu, don't you think that means that you've got something special, too?"

±

On the morning of the Olympic opening ceremonies, Atsumu tears his entire packed wardrobe apart because he can't find his socks. He finds his pyjamas #1, pyjamas #2, casual-athleisure-slash-thirst-trap muscle tees #1 through #6, but for the life of him he cannot find his socks.

"Does it matter?" asks Hinata, sitting at the edge of his own bed with his legs swinging back and forth. "I can give you a pair of mine. My mom gave me a whole pack of new ones before I left for some reason."

Atsumu gives him a half-serious dirty look. "Shouyou-kun. Of course it matters. You don't have a pair of lucky socks you reserved specifically for the Parade of Nations?"

"I don't think so? Actually—" he stops to actually consider this for a second, looking down at his own already socked feet, "—yeah, no. Not at all. How exactly are they lucky?"

They're not lucky so much as the only pair of socks (not the volleyball socks, obviously, those are volleyball socks and reserved for volleyball only) Atsumu has that are both 1. in relatively good condition, and 2. an actual matching pair of socks, instead of all the assorted lone pairs he somehow keeps losing to the death claws of his washing machine.

But it's the Parade of Nations, and Japan will be walking last through the stadium, as the host country. Atsumu woke up extra early to spend extra long in the Olympic village ensuite to gel his hair. He will be damned if he doesn't have his lucky socks for the goddamn opening ceremony.

"Aha!" he declares when he finally locates the socks in the depths of his suitcase, brandishing them triumphantly the way the leading athlete for each nation waves the flag at the parade. "Found 'em."

Later at the team meeting when they both finally make their way to the conference room, Hibarida informs them that their presence at the parade isn't actually mandatory, since their first game against Spain tomorrow is so early in the morning. Sakusa, upon hearing this, makes to retire to his room immediately.

"C'mon, Omi-kun!" Atsumu calls to the back of Sakusa's already rapidly retreating figure. "You're at the Olympics, why wouldn't you participate in the full experience?"

"It's walking around a field," Sakusa tells him sullenly. "I could walk around a field every single other day of my life."

"You have such a talent for making everything sound so much less cool than it is," says Hoshiumi, who sounds genuinely impressed, like it's a skill he's interested in acquiring for himself. 

"One in a lifetime chance, Omi-san!" says Hinata.

"The last time Tokyo was host to the Summer Olympics was in the year 1964," offers Ushijima placidly. "It can be surmised that you will not be able to experience this particular setting ever again in your athletic career."

"If I only have one chance in life to walk around a field in Tokyo under these specific circumstances, I honestly think I'm okay not taking it," says Sakusa, far more politely put than any response he would've given to any member of this team who wasn't benevolent serene stoic Ushijima. Favouritism kills. "I will see you tomorrow, Wakatoshi-kun." He says it like it was a one-on-one conversation instead of a team meeting, and makes his exeunt. Atsumu will reiterate—favouritism kills.

"Right," Bokuto proclaims brightly, clapping his hands together as the door clicks shut behind Sakusa. "Do you think that gives me a better chance to get caught on camera if I do a cartwheel while we walk in?" he asks. Aran groans, Hoshiumi starts yelling, Yaku and Suna start fervently whispering, and the meeting completely devolves from there.

±

Later, Atsumu will think that even if Sakusa is terminally cynical in his refusal to find joy in anything normal in life, he's a little right about there being nothing particularly special about walking a lap in a field, even if he does get an ego boost from the roar of the crowd when they enter.

Much later, he will reflect on the parade, the diplomatic farces, the various speeches that drone on and on, the blazing torch, and think that all of it is really just a prelude to what he's actually here for, the sport that actually matters to him.

As they're both getting ready for bed, he tries to explain this to Hinata.

"Yeah," says Hinata thoughtfully. "But I did mean it earlier when I said it was a once in a lifetime thing! Like, we're not here only to walk in a parade, but being able to walk in this parade is also only possible because of everything we've done. It doesn't mean that it's not special. We can only be on this team together once every four years, you know? I think once you stop thinking of it only happening once every four years as the reason why it's special, you can appreciate the actual reason why it does matter even more."

"So, what, am I doomed to only see you every four years like the birthday party of some poor unlucky bastard unlucky born on leap day?" Atsumu says, lacking the immediate self-control not to zero in on that one point, always a little dizzy with the full weight of Hinata's earnestness. It's okay, Atsumu thinks, that it sounds like a desperate plea, if only he can still mask it with a joking tone. 

Hinata doesn't offer him that joking reprieve of an escape route, though. With Hinata, there's never any shortcut. He says, seriously: "Don't be silly, Atsumu-san. This year's obviously special, but we've both made it this far on the national team, haven't we? We've still got the FIVB World Cup, World Championships, Nations League, the AVC Championships—"

"Okay, okay, I get it." Atsumu can't help an endeared laugh at the concentrated expression on Hinata's face as he counts international tournaments off his fingers. "I get it, fine, you don't gotta list all the championships there is."

"Are you sure?" Hinata asks, directing a meaningful look up at Atsumu. Whether or not it's the product of starting his life over in a foreign country, halfway around the world from anything he ever knew, Hinata is far more perceptive than anyone tends to give him credit for.

It's really not an unfounded random occurrence, after all, that Hinata's got heaps of admirers trailing him from one hemisphere to another, from beachfront volleyball nets to the MSBY practice gym, from the mountains of Miyagi to the stands here at the Olympic stadium. Time and time again, Atsumu finds himself relearning this truth. Somehow, though, the thought no longer feels like an invisible constricting force around his throat. 

"Because I could go on, you know," says Hinata meaningfully, who's now pulled up a full list of tournaments on his phone. "For every single year we've got coming after that."

"Yeah, yeah," Atsumu says, waving a hand and trying to hide the smile that threatens to overtake his face, though he ultimately can't hold back the laugh that bubbles up in his throat.

Because it's true, isn't it, that both of them had come far since the first time they stood on the same court as doe-eyed high schoolers. Atsumu covers Hinata's hand with his own, prying the phone from his fingers and setting it on the nearby table before lacing their fingers together again.

"Good," declares Hinata, satisfied, swinging their joined hands a little. "'Cause you really shouldn't get it twisted, Atsumu-san. I'm still right here."

This time, Atsumu can't help but surge forward, cup Hinata's face between his palms, and kiss him fiercely. It doesn't matter whether it'd been an ultimatum or a promise that he'd issued, after that first match. Atsumu tells himself a fact of volleyball: Hinata has made his way back here, on his side of the net.

They kiss for a first time, a second, third, until the numbering doesn't matter and he no longer cares to count, because they both know there will be more. When Hinata pulls away to laugh, his face tucked against Atsumu's collarbone, Atsumu swears he can feel the reverberation there, in his chest, against his throat, in the tips of his fingers, all the way down in the depths of his soul.

"So am I," he finally breathes, knocking their foreheads together. Under the dim light, he can't stop staring at the way Hinata's eyelashes fan out over his cheeks. "I'm here, too."

He curls an arm around Hinata and keeps him close, even if the AC unit in their assigned Olympic village room isn't nearly functional enough to warrant this kind of proximity in the throes of summer. Atsumu knows for sure that it's nothing as flimsy as fate that has held him firmly by Hinata's side, not when he's so tangible and real and here.

Because isn't that what matters, when Atsumu peels back the layers to clearly see the core of it all?

Hinata's here. They're both here, again on the same side, because time is a circle in the shape of a volleyball.

("Volleyballs are spheres, dumbass," says the bored Osamu voice in his conscience.

Or maybe like the sun? muses Atsumu dreamily.)

"You ready?" Hinata asks him in the morning, standing shoulder-to-shoulder before the game.

"Yeah." Standing here in the stadium, Atsumu knows he can tilt his head up above and see right through the overhead skylight.

When the whistle sounds to signify the start of the game, sunshine filters through the open sky to illuminate the incontrovertible trajectory of his toss. The seawater that always ends up finding its way back to shore. He finds himself directly in Hinata's view, under the wide expanse of clear, perfect blue—and so, up to the sky Atsumu floats.