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Stupid. The lot of them.
Kenji Futakuchi slouched on his solo walk home, pouting. His feet trudging along kicked up stones on the cracked sidewalk. His hand in his pocket gripped his phone, expecting (inwardly demanding) a groveling text message that wasn’t coming. How could his teammates treat him so? he obnoxiously thought, although he himself didn’t see it as obnoxious.
They had crushed their opponent at practice today mercilessly, like always. The way Futakuchi saw it, it was a pity match for an inexperienced team run by a coach who was friends with their own. Oiwake cajoled them to go easy on their foes. Go easy? That’s not how it works in volleyball, Futakuchi silently retorted.
And sure enough, he made sure to massacre the opposing team set after set. He savored the despair on his younger opponents’ faces. Before long, he became aware of the indignant stares coming from his own teammates. “Tone it down,” Obara cautioned at one point. Nametsu pulled him aside. “Maybe you didn’t hear the coach about taking note of their skill level,” she said with a serious grin. Even Aone just stared straight at him without a word after Futakuchi slammed down a point. By then, Futakuchi was getting irritated. “Got a problem with me, huh?” he spat.
Oiwake spent the cleanup after the match apologizing to his coach friend for the captain’s behavior. Futakuchi snorted when he overheard.
“Um, Futakuchi,” Sakunami murmured, “wasn’t that a little harsh?”
“What? You too?” Futakuchi shot back, making the libero jump.
“Yeah, I get that taunting them is, like, good to throw off their balance,” Kogane echoed, “but they were a bit young for that.”
“Not you too.” Futakuchi rolled his eyes.
Aone plodded over to him.
“You were quite disrespectful today,” he said in an uncharacteristically forward statement.
“What’s wrong with you guys? This is the way we’ve gotten to be the best in the district!” Futakuchi exclaimed.
“No, this is the way we got to be the most hated team in the district,” Sakunami said candidly and sighed.
Futakuchi gritted his teeth. He couldn’t stand being ganged up on like this.
“You got a problem with me?” he snapped at everyone.
“Well, yeah, maybe sometimes,” Kogane said a bit too honestly. Unexpectedly, Futakuchi’s bravado took a hit.
“It gets tiring, no lie,” added Obara.
“Sometimes, it is unnecessary,” Onagawa appended.
Futakuchi looked to Aone for support, believing he would get it at least from there.
Aone was silent again, looking away shyly—his way of saying he agreed with everyone else’s indictment.
Futakuchi shook angrily. “Well, fine! If you don’t like the way I play, maybe I’ll just leave!”
He stomped off the court. Defying everyone’s protests to come back, he threw over the ball cart, spilling volleyballs everywhere, and stamped out of the gym.
Ungrateful. They were all ungrateful. Under Futakuchi’s leadership, they had become a team capable of rivaling Shiratorizawa and Karasuno. Let’s see how they fare without him. Of course, their success couldn’t exclusively be attributed to one player, but that was neither here nor there. Once they realized how much they needed Futakuchi, they’d come crawling back to him.
That’s why he was, in fact, surprised by his phone’s silence. Where were the desperate text messages? Where were the apologetic phone calls? In reality, his teammates saw it as little more than a tantrum, so they would let him cool down and talk it out at practice tomorrow. Some of them were maybe just a tad heated themselves and didn’t want to talk.
To Futakuchi, it was all the same: the silence meant they didn’t want him.
His face sank pensively. Perhaps it was better if he left for real….
The wind shifted. Futakuchi had detoured through the park to clear his mind. The leaves around him rustled wistfully.
And then he saw it, alongside the park path: a stall built out of wood. Futakuchi didn’t remember ever seeing it before. It advertised “Sour Gummies. Samples” on a rickety sign, and the entire table was stacked with party-size packets of gummy bears.
Futakuchi wandered up to the stall. An extremely short figure wearing a green shawl over their head sat on a tree stump behind the stall, cradling the tip of an old wooden cane. Futakuchi estimated it to be a woman, but he couldn’t tell. The only part of her (or his) body he could see was heavily wrinkled, gray fingers with uncut fingernails atop the cane. The shop seller didn’t even acknowledge Futakuchi when he approached.
“Hey. These free?” Futakuchi said in an attempt to get the seller’s attention. “Seller” wasn’t even the right word, since he couldn’t see any price signage or any merchandise besides the small gummy packs advertised as samples.
The figure’s hooded head looked up, but—perhaps because of the darkness of the evening—Futakuchi couldn’t see a face inside the hood.
“Take one, and your troubles will go away,” the person croaked. Their voice sounded eerily hollow.
Futakuchi grimaced, making no attempt to hide how much the person creeped him out.
He took one pack, ripped it open, and popped a single green gummy in his mouth.
It was sour but, strangely, had no flavor.
The wind kicked up fiercely.
“You think we were too harsh on him?”
“Yeah, I kinda feel bad.”
“I think he actually took it to heart.”
“I didn’t mean to make it sound like we don’t like him.”
“If you’re all so beat up about it, why don’t you tell him yourself instead of standing around moping?” Nametsu interjected with cutting precision.
Futakuchi didn’t respond to their belated texts.
He didn’t show up to practice the next day. His parents said he never came home.
In the park, the stall with the sour gummies was gone.