Chapter Text
Before I was even fully awake, the first thing I remembered was the feeling of the bedsheets. They were scratchy to the touch, like they'd been woven with some sort of barnyard hay. Terribly uncomfortable.
The slight annoyance filling me was enough for me to begin to stir. My lashes fluttered softly as I began to half open my eyes, though not enough to see anything clearly. I moved my arms and legs a little in the bed, caught off guard by how stiff my muscles and joints felt. Dear god, how long have I been asleep?
Gently, I began to open my eyelids fully. Or at least, tried to. I still couldn't see a single thing. I thought I'd done it, but my surroundings remained completely dark. Not as I'd been used to experiencing it, like some kind of dimly lit room, but utterly black. Almost as if I'd been swallowed into the night sky itself. I was left to take the logical leap that my eyelids weren't working.
What's up with my eyes? Why can't I open them? Am I having a stroke or something?
Fearful, I gave my eyes a few hard, frantic blinks, so exaggerated to the point where I could hear a deep growling noise in my ears. Almost immediately after, I felt like an idiot for jumping to conclusions. But more pressing was the fact that my sight was still black. It was unsettling.
Before I could even try to figure out what was up with my vision, I immediately felt a searing pain in the back of my head. It was pounding at my skull, the ache lining up perfectly with my heartbeat. I lifted my hand to the pain's source, only for it to be met with a papery surface. It felt like a bandage, and a thick one at that. Following it's outline with my finger revealed that it seemed to be wrapped around my entire head like a sloppily made sweat band. Ah, so that must be why I can't see. Whoever put this on me must've covered up my eyes by accident. My initial nervousness was quelled, at the very least.
That thought made a question pop into my head. Where was I, and who put me here? At the moment, neither of the answers were any closer to me than the moon, although, that didn't mean they were impossible to find. I shifted in the bed to sit up, back resting on the wall.
Sight restricted, I strained my ears to take in my surroundings. To my right, I could hear the light, pretty sound of a bird singing, and to my left, the quiet hum of some kind of electrical equipment, almost like a room heater. So a window and... something? And bandages on my head. I took a hard sniff with my nose, which was stung by the faint, yet harsh scent of antiseptic. Oh, am I in a hospital? Curious, I took my right hand to my left forearm and sure enough, felt a small plastic tube hooked into it. I was in a hospital room, and seeing as I was on an IV, it must've been a while since I got here.
"Alright, great, so I know where I am now," I began to whisper aloud to myself, feeling my brows absentmindedly furrow in concentration, "Wonderful, but I still have no clue why I'm here in the first place."
I'd gotten hurt, obviously, but how? I struggled to recall anything about how I'd ended up here, but my mind was completely blank. My headache made it a lot harder to focus than it should've been. Gritting my teeth, I tried my best to ignore it and thought back as hard as I could. Finally, I managed to recover a single messy, garbled memory. The feeling of running, hard. It was unmistakable. The straining of my muscles and lungs and the pounding of my heart in my chest were vivid, as if I was currently in the middle of a marathon. There was no doubt about it, that's definitely the last thing I'd been doing before somehow passing out.
"Ok, so, running," I said barely audibly, as if I were laying out puzzle pieces in front of me, "Running from what? Or towards what?"
I didn't know. No matter how long I made my mind linger on the memory, any slight semblance of context remained strikingly out of reach. Not even a single emotion or detail of my surroundings were present, just the feeling in my body of running. I couldn't help but get a little annoyed with myself. C'mon, head! Do your stupid job! Frustrated, I balled up my fist and gave my forehead a few quick, light taps, in way too much pain to be stupid enough to do anything harder.
What left me even more confused was the question of how the hell I could go from running to being knocked out in the hospital with a head injury that hurt this bad. What, did I trip or something? I hoped not. I didn't like to think of myself as the clumsy type.
My train of thought got interrupted by the hard sound of the door to my left suddenly swinging open. Startled, my head swiftly whipped over to face it, realizing only after that my knee jerk reaction had been utterly useless.
"Oh, you're finally awake," sang an unfamiliar sickly sweet female voice from the doorway. Annoyingly sweet.
"Yeah," I muttered back, tired. I figured she had to be my nurse, or perhaps my doctor.
"That's great!" she went on. I heard her heels hit the tiled floor with sharp, distinct clicks as she neared me.
"How are you feeling?"
Seriously? I found the fact that I was getting asked that question irritating. Well, you know, after getting my head hit who knows how hard and getting knocked out for who knows how long, I feel just dandy. Immediately after the initial annoyance entered my mind, I realized that her asking that question was literally just her doing her job and felt a little like an idiot.
"Not good," I answered honestly, "My head hurts really bad."
"Oh yeah, well, that's to be expected," she said. The high pitched squeak of metal being pushed on cheap tile hit my ears so hard I almost winced. She must've moved a chair near my bed.
"You took a really hard fall there," she continued sympathetically.
Aw, damn it, really? So I did trip? It took restraint to not outwardly groan at myself. When'd I become such a stupid clutz?
"Ok, so," the woman began, "I'm gonna get your parents in the room soon, but first I've just gotta ask you a few questions to check on the state of your injury, alright, kiddo?"
I gave her a soft nod in response, to which she went on with, "Perfect. So, can you tell me your name?"
"Yeah, Tobio Kageyama."
I heard the recognizable sound of a pencil scribbling on a clipboard, in such a swift and erratic fashion I was practically able to see the woman's sloppy handwriting through the bandages.
"How old are you?" she went on asking.
"16," every answer I gave was quickly jotted down.
"Any siblings?"
"Uh huh. I have an older sister, Miwa."
"Does she still live with you?"
"No."
"Where do you go to school?"
"Karasuno."
"You in any clubs?"
"Yeah, I play volleyball."
I shifted in the bed, a little uncomfortable. I feel like I'm getting interrogated.
"Awesome," she said finally, triumphant, "You don't seem to have any memory issues, so you shouldn't have a concussion."
Well, yeah, maybe not long term, but I still don't remember how I got this injury in the first place. I stopped on that thought, considering if I should tell her, but decided against it for the simple reason that I couldn't be bothered to open my mouth again.
"You lucked out pretty good there, kiddo!" she added, upbeat.
For a moment I didn't respond, just facing her, not fighting to keep the disdain off my face as my head felt like it was getting carved into by a drill.
"Well, ok, you might not feel like it, but you are," she explained, the friendliness seeming to refuse to leave her tone, "They're quite common with head injuries like your's, and can be really serious."
Yeah, whatever.
"Alright, I just got one more quick thing I have to check, then I'll be out of your hair, I promise," the woman told me.
"Ok," I answered.
"Perfect," she continued, "Now, how many fingers am I holding up?"
There was a pause as the woman waited in patient expectance with what could only be assumed to be a hand and pointed fingers out in front of her, in which I was just left to sit there for a moment, a little puzzled. What's the deal with that question? My first instinct was to get defensive. Are you mocking me? Seriously?
"Umm," I started, "How am I supposed to answer that?"
For a moment, the woman was silent, uncomfortably so, before at last replying, "With your...eyes..." The response was hesitant and slow, lacking her previous optimistic sense of confidence. She almost sounded a little worried.
At her reaction, my defensiveness fizzled out into pure perplexity. What the hell? Is this chick blind or something? Or are these bandages supposed to be thin enough to see through?
"Well, I still have these bandages on, and I can't see through them at all," I explained, pointing at my eyes.
The statement got met with nothing but an eerie, dead silence from the woman, making the birdsong and the machine at my side seem to fill the room once again. I was left even more confused. What's up with that? Did I offend her somehow? The idea seemed absurd, but it certainly wouldn't be the first time.
"Kid," she said finally, her voice suddenly somber and serious, "You don't have any bandages over your eyes." Her chipper, bright demeanor seemed to have dissolved in thin air.
Huh? What's that supposed to mean? My initial confusion began to fuse with shock. Of course I have bandages over my eyes, obviously. If not, then why wouldn't...
I hesitated briefly before bringing my hands to my face, full of apprehension, hoping with everything I had that upon making contact my fingers would be met with paper or cloth or just anything other than the softness of my skin. After taking a moment to convince myself that the worst couldn't even be a faint possibility, I lightly touched the tips of my fingers to my eyes and instantly, my stomach sank as if I'd just jumped off a cliff. There were eyelashes, eyebrows, and skin, but not the slightest trace of a bandage. ...Why wouldn't I be able to see..?
For a while, I stayed near perfectly still, save for the slight trembling of my hands, unable to say a single word. Eventually, a single phrase snuck onto my lips from the back of my mind, uttered in a soft whisper almost without a single thought.
"Oh shit."
...
Only roughly two days since I'd been allowed to come home from the hospital, my family had already gotten a call back this morning requesting we come in for what they'd called a 'quick check.' After the fact, I wished they'd just been upfront about 'quick' equating to five hours, most of which we'd spent simply twiddling our thumbs hopefully in the waiting room.
They'd brought in a neurologist and taken scans of my brain. Makes sense, I had gotten a TBI, after all. It was more surprising that it'd taken so long for them to get around to it. The results were conclusive, just how my doctor had theorized they'd be the first day I'd woken up.
The doctors had dumbed it down enough for me to understand. Basically, I fell really hard and took an awful hit to the back of my head. The part of my brain that handled processing vision got totally screwed up. The problem had nothing to do with my eyes, it was entirely neurological. That being said, the sciencey mumbo jumbo didn't really matter to me that much, as all it really provided to me was an explanation as to why. I didn't care about why this was happening, all I wanted to know was how it could be fixed. If such a thing even existed at all.
What I'd been hoping for more than anything was that the MRI would shed new light on my condition. That when looking at the injury directly from the inside like that, the doctors would figure out a surgery that may work, or some kind of therapy or medicine. That my vast, bright future and hopes I'd had laid out so neatly in front of me would get restored and I'd get control of my life back. The wish had been nothing more than a fleeting daydream.
The biggest news I'd received that day, after waiting hours in silent pleading, was devastating. My brain was damaged beyond repair. There was nothing that could ever return my vision.
All my life, every time I'd seen something I'd wanted that was out of reach, I'd simply decide it was mine for the taking. Impossibility was a challenge. No was an invitation. Barriers were an opportunity. I'd replace all my faults with tenacity, stubbornness, and an unwavering ability to push my weariness aside. I'd stumble, sometimes even fall flat on my face, but I could pick myself up a thousand times if I had to. Working myself down to the bone, unwilling to stop until I finally stood where I wanted to be. For the first time, it was different.
No amount of grit would fix this. I could fight like hell, be as relentless and persistent as my body would allow me, and never in a whole lifetime would I ever even get close. This wasn't what could be considered an 'unreachable goal,' it was a non-existent one. No amount of hard work can get you to something that isn't real. The far off finish line I was so used to pursuing, sometimes even feeling like I was forcibly dragging myself towards, had suddenly been erased. I was left to stand powerless, chained down, drowning in a sea of darkness, feeling nothing. What even was there to feel? Hopelessness? Self pity? Regret? No, I'd never let myself succumb to such emotions before, and I wasn't going to start now. I couldn't fight them away like I could before, but I still couldn't let myself feel them. My only option was to ignore them.
And that I did.
Until...