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He wouldn’t admit it, but perhaps playing volleyball on a cruise ship was a bad idea. The pulsing in Sugawara’s ankle reinforced that conclusion.
The cruise was Ukai’s idea, as relaxation for his hardworking team. Fat chance of relaxing when surrounded by Kageyama and Hinata, whose peculiar forms of cabin fever no doubt stemmed from volleyball withdrawals. It lasted until they’d haplessly chanced upon Yuuji Terushima aboard the vessel and discovered all the Johzenji starters were on a teambuilding retreat. One thing led to another, and the two teams made their way to the deck for a game.
And some time later, Daichi helped Suga hobble back to their shared accommodation on the ship.
Daichi hoisted Sugawara onto one of the adjacent beds.
“Thank you, my knight in shining armor,” Sugawara said teasingly with a smile. “Could you please bring me my phone?” Daichi rolled his eyes and left to get the device from the room where they’d been playing.
On deck, the skies were black. Daichi passed Terushima, still in his volleyball uniform in defiance of the chillingly moist air, gazing pensively at the impending storm.
Downstairs, Suga tried visualization to null the pain when there was a knock at the door.
“No need to knock,” Suga said, presuming it to be Daichi. Terushima, having gotten the room number from Daichi, blushed and opened the door up. For an introduction, he stuck out his tongue teasingly, tongue ring reflecting the ceiling light in the windowless room.
“You still alive in here?” Terushima joked.
“Huh? Oh, it’s you.” Sugawara said with a coy smile.
Terushima gulped. “Hey, so…I’m sorry—”
The whole room jerked violently. A metallic explosion reverberated through the seagoing vessel. Terushima’s head banged against the floor, and he passed out.
Terushima heard an aggrieved moaning of metal when he stirred. He had no idea how much time had passed. The room was pitch black, such that he couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed.
He felt around aimlessly for his cell phone. He couldn’t feel the distinct texture of carpet; instead, his hands drummed against plastic sheets, disorienting him immensely. His head bumped against a lopsided piece of furniture. Crawling in the dark, he felt a mattress—not on any bed—but kept searching. At last, near the wall, he felt his phone. Turning on the lock screen blinded him, but when he could, he activated the flashlight to shine more light on the rest of the room.
The beam struggled to illuminate the pitch-black room. Now the cause of his disorientation was clear. The entire room was upside-down. All of the furniture had been flipped over or flung around. The two beds lay upside-down, the mattress on one having partially slid off and become exposed while the bed rested over the other half. One of the chair legs was broken, and the rest of the chair rested atop an overturned desk.
Terushima shone his light towards the door, and there he saw a human body: Sugawara.
Terushima scrambled on all fours over to the boy who didn’t appear to be moving.
“Hey, Sugawara,” he shook the boy, who winced. Terushima then spotted the boy’s leg which, to his horror, looked broken. He presumed it happened during whatever calamity caused the room to turn over and that Sugawara then attempted to drag himself to the door to escape.
Terushima used the severed chair leg and some towels to make a crude splint. He grabbed towels from the bathroom (which was an eerie sight upside-down) and did his best first aid work as Suga gnashed his teeth.
Despite how ineffective the effort was, Suga thought his leg felt a little better.
“Thank you,” he mumbled.
Terushima breathed exhaustedly. “Don’t mention it.”
He took a moment to assess their predicament. Their ship had evidently capsized. There was no power. Terushima put his ear to the door and heard sloshing of water and rolling of the exposed hull above the waves. No voices sounded outside. A puddle sat in front of the doorway. Terushima dared not open the door for fear of flooding them. They would just have to stay here.
But for how long could they do that?
Terushima began to notice even the air in the room was chilly.
Sugawara took quick and short breaths, his leg in incredible pain. Terushima refocused on the wounded teenager. In the name of keeping him comfortable, he lifted Sugawara onto the overturned mattress. He retrieved two blankets from the beds: one he placed over Sugawara, and one he wrapped around himself like a throw.
Terushima checked his phone for a signal to get help, to no avail. His phone battery sat at 15%. Curse himself for not charging it.
“Hey, I can’t keep my flashlight on,” he grumbled.
“It’s fine,” Sugawara huffed before Terushima killed the beam and plunged them into total darkness again. “We should just…keep quiet…anyway.”
Sugawara’s heavy breaths provided a constant reminder that he was alive at least. Terushima sat on the ceiling against the mattress, facing a doorway he couldn’t see, pondering how long rescue would take, when it would come, the safety of his teammates and the ship’s crew, the welfare of his family, and Sugawara’s health.
He recalled the volleyball match was his idea, a “rematch” for the humiliation at regionals. After Karasuno’s prodigy setter subbed out (hilariously due to seasickness), Sugawara entered the fray. Terushima decided to give him a warm welcome and spiked a ball hard in the setter’s direction. Suga made an awkward dig but in doing so stepped on his ankle weirdly. His withdrawal from the match prematurely ended the friendly scrimmage.
Terushima felt guilty for reasons he wasn’t sure of. He spent a long time on the deck in his volleyball uniform, ignoring the chill, pondering the waves, until Karasuno’s captain passed by and mentioned their setter was doing fine. Terushima asked to apologize. Sawamura gave Terushima their room number while saying he’d be back momentarily.
Sawamura never made it back, evidently.
“I’m sorry,” Terushima mumbled in the dark.
“Huh?” Sugawara said to the disembodied voice, feeling as if he were being addressed by a ghost.
“It’s my fault you’re here. If you hadn’t gotten hurt, you would have made it off the ship before this happened.”
“That’s not true,” he said breezily.
“So…you’re saying our teammates are trapped like us?”
Sugawara’s breath caught at that. He saw an outline of Daichi in his mind’s eye and then his whole squad. Neither of them had any idea if their friends were alive. Sugawara’s heart gripped at the thought that they had drowned with only himself and Terushima surviving.
Terushima’s mind wandered in an equally terrifying direction. What if their friends had all made it off but didn’t know Terushima and Sugawara were alive and now left them to their fate?
“Nothing we can do, I guess. I left my phone when we were playing. Daichi was going to grab it for me. And yours has no signal, right?”
Terushima hadn’t mentioned that detail to avoid causing panic, but he grimaced. “Yeah.”
Sugawara calmly exhaled. At least the talking distracted him from the pain. During the initial impact, he’d tried to get out of bed but broke his leg when the furniture shifted. He had tried to crawl to the door when he passed out.
Terushima listened carefully to Sugawara’s soft, consistent breathing.
“How can you be so calm?” Terushima moped. “You and your team are just amazing.”
“Well, this is a surprise. For someone who tried to hit on our manager so strongly, you’re pretty humble,” Sugawara joked. Terushima might have been offended, except this wasn’t a particularly easygoing time to be uptight.
“You know, I used to think being on the bench meant you were weak.” Terushima pulled the blanket tighter as he felt a chill. In the darkness, his body seemed so much more sensitive to both to the cold and to the fur of the blanket. “When I started high school, I was always on the bench after being a regular in middle school, and I thought that made me a failure. So I worked hard in practice until I became a starter.”
Terushima wrapped the blanket tighter around himself, but his bare arms and legs felt like a freezer to the touch. He regretted spending that time contemplating the storm instead of changing into something warmer after the game.
Unbeknownst to Terushima, Sugawara could feel the boy’s occasional shivers.
“You’re cold,” he said simply.
“Am not,” Terushima lied.
“Yeah, right. I can tell.”
Terushima didn’t object that time.
“You remind me of Daichi just a little,” Sugawara said suddenly.
“I do?” said Terushima, piqued by being compared to the captain whom he credited with being Karasuno’s solid foundation.
“Don’t get too excited,” Sugawara teased, “but I mean, you’re both strong. And you both try to be good leaders, and I think that’s important.”
Terushima wasn’t in the mood to accept compliments about volleyball. “He was a good captain.”
“I’m sure your team thinks you are too.”
Terushima frowned sadly. He waited before responding. “I must not be good enough since you guys went to Nationals.”
Sugawara also waited a beat before responding. “I think there’s more to it than that.”
Awkward silence wafted over them again. Terushima briefly flashed the screen of his phone: 12% battery with an hour having passed. Sugawara’s breathing gradually became heavier in the quiet. Terushima listened to its rhythmic beat to stay sane.
As time progressed, Sugawara felt the pain in his leg worsening. His breathing gradually became unsteady. He tried to pretend it wasn’t a big deal, but the throbbing forced small noises out of him.
Terushima spun around quickly. He flipped on his flashlight and shone it on Sugawara.
“Hey, Suga. You OK?”
His face looked pale and sickly.
“You called me Suga. What’s with that?” the boy joked with an uneasy grin. “For a second, I thought Daichi was here.”
Terushima lifted the blanket to see Sugawara’s leg. He’d rolled up the boy’s pants to apply his makeshift splint, and he could see the whole lower leg looked purple and swollen.
“We have to do something,” Terushima said.
“I’ll be fine,” Sugawara heaved.
“No,” Terushima stated. “We have to make sure your leg is OK when we get out of here.”
“If we get out,” Sugawara whispered.
“We’re getting out!” Terushima insisted.
Sugawara said nothing at first and let Terushima do his work. Even so, Terushima hadn’t a clue what there was to do. He tried reknotting, but that just made Sugawara uncomfortable, so he gave up on further adjustments.
“Sorry,” Terushima said apologetically. “I don’t know first aid.”
“It’s fine,” Sugawara said breathily. “Thanks.”
Terushima looked at his phone battery after using it as a light during his makeshift and too-long first aid spell: 3%. He grimaced.
He set the phone down with the flashlight still on, giving up on prolonging the inevitable. He curled his cold knees up to his chin and lost himself in thought, until his phone eventually died and the room was thrown into darkness once again.
The only noise in the room was the metallic moaning of the ship in the waves and Sugawara’s breathing for a while longer. Sugawara focused on the rhythmic creaks of the boat, fantasizing where on the ship the sounds might be coming from and what could be causing them.
After a while, another sound cut through the metal: chattering teeth.
Terushima huddled the blanket tighter but couldn’t make himself warmer. As hard as he tried to lock his jaw, his teeth involuntarily clacked.
“You’re cold,” Sugawara accused.
“Am not.”
“Liar.”
Terushima once again had no answer for him.
“Get up here,” Sugawara then said.
“Huh?”
Suga wriggled himself over to make room on the edge of the mattress for another person. He fanned out the blanket with a flap.
“Get up here. It will be warmer.”
Terushima hesitated at first, but the instinctive desire for warmth drew him to climb onto the mattress without a word. He remained wrapped up in his own blanket and pulled part of Sugawara’s over the top of him. The softness of Terushima’s blanket tickled Sugawara’s arm.
To Terushima’s surprise, he swore he felt warmer already.
“I guess this is what they call ‘strange bedfellows,’” Suga chuckled.
Time passed in silence, and Terushima even thought Suga’s breathing had normalized a little, but as Suga’s pain grew greater, his breathing became more erratic.
Terushima couldn’t help but feel pity. He stretched out an arm into the invisible blackness and hugged Suga in an effort to say “it’s OK.”
They were going to be OK, Terushima told himself quietly, even though he didn’t believe it.
Feeling Terushima’s arm across his chest, Sugawara felt oddly comfortable. He folded one hand over the other boy’s bare arm and let himself be consumed in this moment. For just a second—only a second—all his pain went way.
Then, Suga’s breathing rapidly worsened. Terushima hugged him tighter, until Suga’s breaths got weaker and more strained. Though he said nothing, Suga felt like less oxygen entered his lungs with each gasp. Terushima sat up, inadvertently pulling the blanket off Suga.
“Hey. You OK?” he asked nervously.
Suga didn’t answer. His breaths became so faint Terushima couldn’t even hear them anymore.
“Hey. Suga?”
Terushima shook the boy but received no reply.
“Hey, wake up.”
He shook him harder.
“Suga…Suga…. Hey! Wake up, I said!” he yelled frantically.
He got a broken, raspy reply….
“Thanks…, Teru-….”
Terushima waited for the teen to finish his name, but Suga said no more.
“Hey,” Terushima said, starting to cry. “Come on. Listen to me. Please…don’t go. Don’t leave me here….”
Terushima noticed his own breath getting shorter. His voice became raspy as tears flowed.
“Please…I don’t want to die here….”
He sobbed over Suga’s chest, moaning loudly, until he could barely breathe anymore.
He rolled himself off the bed and hit the plastic of the ceiling with a thud. He tried crawling to the door, desperately heaving for oxygen. He couldn’t remember how far away the door was, and in the darkness, he had no sense of if he was even crawling in the right direction. Each sluggish move forward felt like he’d made no progress.
He took one last, suffocating breath, and his body became limp. He mentally ordered his muscles to move further, but he didn’t have the energy to rouse them.
And so, there he stayed, alone with himself, until his thoughts faded into the distance.