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Tobio found him outside the stadium after they lost.
The sky was split open, and the rain fell. Hinata stood in the curtain of water. His uniform was soaked; he didn’t move, his back to Tobio. Under the grey of the sky, the grey of the buildings and the pavement, his hair was burning bright, sticking to his scalp.
Tobio stood, clothes dry, in the hallway. The rain tilted in and wet his shin, lightly, bringing with it the chill of spring.
A long while later, he said, “The bus is here.”
Hinata didn’t move. Another long while later, he turned and brushed past Tobio. Tobio didn’t see his face. Water dripped from the hem of Hinata’s clothes and left a long trail behind.
Two months ago, Hinata confessed to him.
It was very understated. They were in the dingy storage room rolling up the net after practice when Hinata said, “I like you, Kageyama.”
Tobio blinked. He turned to look at Hinata; Hinata was one step ahead and already looking at him. His eyes caught the only light in the tiny, shadowy room and glinted. The air was warm, thick with the smell of dust.
“Oh,” Tobio said. Then, uncertain, “I like you, too.”
Hinata’s mouth twitched like he didn’t know whether to smile.
“Not as a teammate,” he said. “I like you.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” Hinata said, turning back to continue rolling up the net. This was familiar; everything was familiar, the dusty smell of the air, the cluttered shelves, the coarse rope in his hands. Tobio held the net, uncertain. Hinata finished and turned away to the baskets of volleyballs.
Slowly, Tobio put the rolled-up net back where it should be.
When they walked out of the gym, Hinata was already talking about the tonkatsu he’d had for lunch. The math quiz he’d failed that morning, the tofu his mother promised to cook for dinner. They passed the convenience store and went in and bought ice pops even though it was too cold, spring hadn’t come yet, and Hinata laughed when Tobio inhaled sharply at the first bite, the chill rushing into his teeth, as Tobio chased him yelling dumbass, dumbass—! Laughter ringing across the mountains as they sped down the hill, chasing each other.
Nothing changed.
It was because nothing changed that Tobio felt strange, like something was wrong. Like standing under heavy clouds waiting for the first drop of rain that didn’t come. Because something was supposed to change, wasn’t it?
“This isn’t a relationship counseling session,” Tsukishima said, looking at once disinterested, disdainful, and underwhelmed. “I help you review English, not offer relationship advice.”
Tobio scowled. He wasn’t the one who brought it up, anyway. Yamaguchi watched them, amused. He’d come to join them for their weekly review sessions; sometimes he helped Tsukishima with Tobio or Hinata, sometimes he needed help from Tsukishima. Tsukishima said he should get overtime pay. They fed him strawberry swiss rolls from the convenience store down the hill to keep him sated.
“Maybe he was pranking you,” Tsukishima said with an evil smile, and yelped. Yamaguchi smiled good-naturedly and turned to Tobio.
“What do you think should have changed?”
Tobio didn’t know. But Hinata still rambled and laughed and talked about the tamagoyaki his mother packed for his lunch, just as always; he received the ball in lovely, perfect high arches and yelled indignantly when Tobio pretended he didn’t see. He high-fived Tobio and leaned against his shoulder and leapt and clung onto him, arms around his neck, Tobio choking. He was natural and sure and absolute, he was ordinary, he was there.
“Is it not good that it’s just like before?” Yamaguchi asked, bewildered. “Isn’t it better than getting awkward?”
Tobio supposed it was. He hesitated.
“But then why did he tell me he liked me?”
They fell into silent puzzlement. Through the window, the sun fell onto their desks in blocks, clean and golden.
“Ding ding ding—” Tsukishima suddenly straightened. “Time’s up. Session’s over. Go back to your classroom.”
Suddenly Brazil grew palpable when Hinata brought his sunglasses to school. It had never not felt like reality, of course, even though beach volleyball was another sport entirely and Brazil a world away, but holding the neon-bright sunglasses in his hands, Tobio felt like he was holding a piece of Brazil—a piece of beach volleyball, a piece of Hinata’s future. He lifted the glasses and peered at them, wondering about vision clarity and dead angles and how the game changed as the dark lenses countered the glare of the sun.
“Isn’t it cool, Kageyama?” Hinata grabbed the glasses from him and put them on. He looked smug. “Look! It’s so cool! So professional!”
His hair fell in front of his glasses. Tobio rolled his eyes.
“Cut your hair, dumbass.”
“I’m doing it this afternoon, jeez—”
These days, before practice, Hinata turned his sneakers upside down to let out the sand. It hid under his collar, in the folds of his shirt when he turned to the table behind him in class and the sun fell on his shoulder, all warm. Pieces of Brazil. Pieces of Brazil, already here.
Hinata ran towards the net, bent his knees, and lifted himself off the wooden floor—into the air. Time stilled. The glare of the ceiling light crowned his head in a halo.
Tobio heard his heartbeat.
Hinata slammed the ball onto the floor. He landed and grinned. “Again!”
Again.
Sweating, Tobio twirled the ball in his hands.
“Well,” Yamaguchi said, “do you like Hinata?”
Tsukishima put on his headphones to signify his exiting the conversation and conspicuous wish to be spared whatever comes next. Tobio ignored him. Only when the question came did Tobio realize that it came much later than he’d thought they were supposed to come.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Yamaguchi hummed. He didn’t point out it wasn’t a no. The sun landed on them; inside the classroom where the cold air couldn’t touch, the patch of light slowly grew warm on their shoulders.
Yamaguchi twirled his pencil. “That kind of answers it, doesn’t it?”
And went back to his notes. Tobio didn’t understand. But the spring tournament was coming, and he still had English vocabularies to focus on, so he didn’t say anything and turned a page on his notebook, thoughts slipping from letters into volleyball and volleyball and volleyball.
Late after practice. His nails made a quick, sharp sound when they brushed against the locker, and Tobio stiffened. He looked at his fingertips. His nails were past the time to be trimmed. Not too long, but just enough to be noticeable.
Hinata leaned over. “Did you cut your fingers?”
“No. But I need to cut my nails.”
“Oh.” Then, “I’ll do it for you.”
Tobio paused, half in confusion and half shocked. Hinata dug through his bag. He’d brought a nail clipper today to cut his nails before practice.
The locker room was empty. Long past the last school bell, long past when practice had ended, the air was silent and stifled and warm. Hinata found his nail clipper. He sat down on the bench; slowly, Tobio lowered himself across Hinata.
Hinata took his hand.
Gently, it surfaced—surfaced in the warm, thick air, surfaced after mornings and afternoons and mornings and afternoons of drills and quizzes and nothings, surfaced after it almost seemed to have faded—Hinata’s confession. It slowly swelled between the lockers, swelled in the warm air, swelled between them. Hinata was looking at his hand, focused. Quiet. He’d cut his hair but it was still long enough to fall in front of his face, to hide his eyes. He took Tobio’s fingers. They curled, as though of their own volition, over Hinata’s own.
The soft sound of nail-clipping began, echoing in the locker room.
“Why did you confess to me?”
Hinata paused infinitesimally before continuing to clip Tobio’s nails.
“Do you want me not to tell you?”
“You’re not doing anything.”
“I’m clipping your nails.”
“But you’re not doing anything else. You’re not doing anything different.”
“Should I be doing something different?”
The room fell into silence as Hinata took Tobio’s other hand. The soft sound of clipping began again.
The quiet hung; he had no answer. He looked at Hinata clip his nails: slow, careful around the edges not to cut his fingertips. He took his hand back when Hinata finished. It was warm, warmer than it should be, burning warm where Hinata’s fingers last touched.
Maybe that was it. Maybe it was the rain. Maybe it was how they’d stepped onto the center court, side by side, all four of them, standing against the bright ceiling lights and the roaring crowd. Maybe it was how still Hinata had stood in the rain, how the sound of the falling water had engulfed everything around them. The chilliness of spring, the water dripping from his chin.
On the bus, Hinata took the window seat as always. He’d changed into dry clothes and toweled his hair; it was still damp. He was looking outside the window. He was always silent after a loss. It was a silence with an edge, a silence that, if wielded, could split the sky in two.
Tobio had known this silence for years.
For the first time, however, it was a weight he wanted to bear.
Tobio pushed the coins into the vending machine. A can of milk fell, and he picked it up.
Hesitated.
Pushed more coins in. Another can of milk fell; he picked it up and brought it to the gym to Hinata. Hinata blinked.
“Oh,” he said.
Tobio’s arm was still outstretched, and he was beginning to feel very embarrassed. Finally Hinata took the milk from him.
“Thanks,” he said softly.
Tobio poked his straw in. By the open doors of the Karasuno Second Gymnasium, they sipped their milk together. The season had ended; the gym was empty. They listened to the quiet of the school ground, the sounds afar echoing across wide openness.
Tobio asked, “When are you leaving?”
Hinata chewed his straw. “In two weeks.”
Tobio paused. It was quicker than he’d thought. Beside him, Hinata tilted his head back and closed his eyes to the sun, as though falling asleep.
“Are you free this Saturday?” he asked.
Tobio nodded, and remembered Hinata had closed his eyes. “Yeah. Why?”
Hinata turned to Tobio. He smiled around the straw in his mouth.
“Have you played beach volleyball?”
Tobio had never known the sand to be so shifting.
The sky was pale, and it looked like it was going to rain at any time. They’d worn windbreakers to keep the cold out, but in the end they took them off anyway, let them lie away in the sand. They were hot and sweaty and panting from running, from falling, from leaping harder than they’d ever leapt and still jumping shorter than they’d ever jumped. They were clumsy in the sand, they were clumsy in the wind. Hinata told him nothing beforehand and laughed when Tobio missed his serve, when Tobio tripped, and then tripped over himself. With only the two of them they couldn’t do much. The ball flew between them and caught the sand in its seams, sand that wouldn’t quite fall away when Tobio wiped at the surface.
They stood on the shore and watched the pale waves roll in, roll in. The wind whipped their hair.
“The sea will look different in Brazil,” Hinata said. “It won’t look like this.”
“You’ve never seen it.”
“That’s what they say.”
Their t-shirts swelled around them in the wind. They should put on their windbreakers soon, it was growing cold, but Tobio didn’t want to quite yet. He was still warm. The wind felt good on his arms.
“I’ll miss you, Kageyama.”
The words lingered between Tobio’s hands before tumbling away with the wind, away to the briny sea. They didn’t feel incongruent. Hinata was looking at the sea, his hair flying in the wind.
“I think I said it more for myself than for you when I confessed. I just wanted to tell you before everything ends.”
“Is it?” Tobio asked. “Is everything ending?”
Hinata dropped his head. There was a small smile hidden at the corner of his mouth.
“Maybe not.”
“You just wanted closure.”
Hinata’s eyes widened. “Kageyama, you know about closure?”
Tobio bristled. Hinata laughed; his hair was wild in the wind, wild waves of its own, burning bright under the pale sky. Tobio wanted to touch him, all of a sudden. To touch this boy whom the wild wind had kissed all over, whom the salts had pressed themselves to; he reached out and touched Hinata’s hand. Hinata folded Tobio’s hand into his own, warmly, easily, with the clumsiness of doing it for the first time.
Jestingly, “Are you going to miss me?”
“Shut up.” Then, “Come back.”
“Of course.” Hinata looked ahead to the sea. “You’re not going to wait for me.”
“No,” Tobio said. “I’m going ahead.”
Hinata smiled to himself. His hand was warm. Strange, that they had touched so many times yet Tobio felt like a boy again, stumbling, wanting, not quite sure what to do but wanting anyway.
Lightly, the rain began to fall. They stayed for another while.
“So you’re telling me it’s been a year and you haven’t kissed,” Tsukishima deadpanned, “and he’s gone for another year, and you have been ogling each other since the second I knew you—”
“With eyes,” Yamaguchi added.
“—and it’s going to be another year until you resolve your—nope, I’m done with this.”
Headphones on, Tsukishima out. Tobio bristled. Yamaguchi laughed.
In the small screen of his phone, Hinata cooked lunch for himself in his kitchen. Tobio was trying not to fall asleep. It was close to midnight. He folded his arms on the table and pillowed his head on his elbow.
“…so I tried it, and it was so—spicy! And there wasn’t any water! I had to…”
Hinata was tiny and grainy on the screen. The dim kitchen light fell along his back, strokes of light and shadow; Tobio wanted to touch him. He yawned.
Fell asleep to the pattering of Hinata’s voice.
When Hinata came back, he received Tobio’s serve in a lovely, perfect high arch, and Tobio smiled.
He found him outside the stadium after the game. The sky was dark, and it was pouring. Hinata was watching the rain. He turned when he heard Tobio, and he smiled. Tobio wanted to kiss him, wanted to kiss him everywhere the foreign sun had touched.
As though reading Tobio’s face, Hinata laughed.
“No!” he said, pushing Tobio away as he stepped close, “No, not here, not now—”
Not on the long taxi ride back home, the city gliding past in patches of light on the leather seat.
Not on the elevator ride up, not in front of the door in the middle of a row of identical doors as the key turned in the keyhole, not after the door had opened and again closed. Not when Hinata opened his suitcase in search of his toothbrush and then gave up in a sea of sunscreen bottles. Not in the kitchen when Hinata heated a mug of milk in the microwave, humming, and Tobio’s hair was still dripping from the shower but Hinata was in his kitchen, here in his kitchen, here—
Tobio stepped close, and Hinata kissed him. And kissed him, and kissed him; light at the beginning and then deep, hands wounding around waist, hands wounding into hair, hands coming up to touch his face. It was the first time, and it was familiar. The microwave beeped. Tobio kissed him again.
Outside, the rain ceased.
They didn’t notice.