Work Text:
On the fifth and final night of the Spring High Tournament, Yamaguchi Tadashi speaks in a voice larger than himself but smaller than the elephant in the room.
Yesterday’s defeat hangs heavy, still, even as they all clutch medals in their fists.
“Get some rest,” Tadashi tells them. “You deserve it.” But in the mild discomfort of his own hotel bed, he traces out volleyball plays on the ceiling like glow-in-the-dark constellations until Kei chucks a pillow at his arm and tells him to stop.
Tadashi sleeps with bronze shining behind his eyelids, dreams of being barefoot on the gymnasium floor, and wakes up early to patch his wings with sports tape.
Tobio and Shouyou burst through the door at exactly 7AM—loud enough to earn groans from the lighter sleepers across the hall and a middle finger from the lump on Kei’s bed. They smell like deodorant and hotel soap. Shouyou’s hair is damp and half its usual volume.
“Breakfast time!” Shouyou cheers.
Tobio nods beside him. “We finished our morning run, so we can all eat together.”
“Good morning, you two.” Tadashi yawns.
It’s surprisingly easy to forget that they have lives outside of each other, that breakfast has always been a much quieter affair, that there is an entire mountain between him and Shouyou instead of just a few doors.
Tadashi doesn’t ever want it to end—even when it already has.
He pads over to Kei’s bed and pulls the sheets off his best friend. “Rise and shine, Tsukki!”
“I hate every single one of you,” Kei groans into his pillow. Shouyou masks his laughter with a cough, but Tadashi doesn’t bother. Kei rolls over to his side and squints at him. “Especially you.”
Tadashi sticks his tongue out and tells Kei to shut up.
Predictably, Tobio and Shouyou race to the dining hall and compete to devour the most food. Across them, Kei rolls his eyes and eats two slices of strawberry shortcake in place of a proper breakfast.
Hitoka arrives after making her rounds, just in time to strike Tobio on the back as he chokes on his rice. “The first years should be on their way,” she tells Tadashi. She plucks a piece of tamagoyaki from Shouyou’s plate and smiles. “G’morning.”
“What about the second years?”
The second years in question show up fifteen minutes before breakfast ends and silently ravage whatever’s left of the buffet. It’s mildly concerning, if not a little impressive.
When he knocks on their doors, after, to remind them that Coach Ukai wants everyone ready to leave in an hour, most of them are slumped over their beds. One is sprawled on the floor, unmoving.
“Five more minutes, mom,” a spiker groans.
A little later, he watches all seven of the first years shove each other on the way to the bus. Tobio and Shouyou look like they want to do the same not too far behind them. Some things never change—even when they do.
Coach Ukai grinds the end of his cigarette on the rim of a trash can, tosses it out, and motions for Tadashi to corral the team before boarding the bus without them.
He clears his throat and lets them trip over themselves as they startle. “Let’s go home,” Tadashi says, shoulders squared and hands clasped together. Even as his captaincy comes to an end, the shoes don’t fit quite right. He trails in after everyone and feels satisfaction settle in his stomach as Takeda-sensei nods his approval from the driver’s seat.
Tadashi does a headcount as the doors close and stares down the second years holding an impromptu arm wrestling competition at the back until their libero meets his gaze and flails to the ground, defeated. At least they were early this time.
It takes four hours and a middle blocker throwing up in the middle of Fukushima to get back to Karasuno. The bus ride is otherwise uneventful, given that most of the team passed out not even five minutes in, but Tadashi wouldn’t have minded a little traffic. A flat tire. Spontaneous engine combustion.
The bus pulls in behind the main building and Takeda-sensei graciously lets them have their moment. It’s a Saturday, but students clamor from every direction. Shouyou eats it right up, leaning over Tobio’s space and poking his head out the window to beam at the crowd.
Shouyou’s enthusiasm lifts everyone’s spirits, but Tadashi rises from his seat to pull everything back together. It’s from somewhere between his lungs and his stomach when he tells them, “Thank you for the past nine months. You did well.”
The team quiets down at that, appeased into something not unlike a chorus of satisfied chirps.
“Now get out of here,” Coach Ukai barks from his seat.
Tadashi sends them off one by one as Hitoka stands tall next to him—all one hundred and fifty-two centimeters of her. Shouyou grins on his way out and calls him senpai, Tobio smiles and calls him Tadashi, and Kei nods and calls him captain.
He pulls his bag closer as he steps off the bus—gym keys buried under his clothes—looks behind Shouyou with a sigh, and tells everyone to go home and rest. The second years are a little tougher to convince. Their faces are tear-stained but hardened by defeat that, unlike him, they will have the chance to avenge.
Leaving the nest feels like walking away from a crime scene, but he only feels a little hypocritical when he splits off from Kei at their usual spot and heads over to Shimada Mart to hit a few serves.
Tadashi is in the middle of his twelfth one when Shimada-san comes to check on him. Serving is the only time you’re alone. He feels his mentor’s gaze at the apex of his jump, where his palm meets the ball and leaves it stuttering in the air.
Play like you have nothing to lose. If you can savor this one shot, this one moment…
He blows out through his teeth, relieving some of the pressure as his heart hammers in his chest. “Do you know how many captains I’ve met that quit volleyball after high school?” He takes a deep breath, throws the ball high, and lets muscle memory seize his limbs.
“How many?” asks Shimada-san.
Tadashi grinds his right shoe against the pavement as he lands and shrugs. “Most of them.” Every night, he whispers their names into a prayer, a confession, a memorial. Volleyball is just a club, life doesn’t end in high school, and other half-truths.
“I remember that first Spring High vividly,” he says, wiping his sweat with the back of his hand. “Shouyou and I watched Inarizaki’s captain do an interview before our match. Daichi-san would have given one hell of a speech if someone bothered to ask him.”
Tadashi jolts when something cold and damp brushes against his arm. Now beside him, his mentor smiles encouragingly and holds a bottle of water in his direction. “What about you, Captain?”
He closes his eyes, draws another lungful of air, and steels himself to answer. “My team is strong,” he starts. They are. They were. When he opens his eyes, his words will just be words. “My team worked hard. My team deserves to be here. Crows are omnivorous, and we don’t forget faces.”
“That was pretty good,” says Shimada-san, nudging him with the bottle until he accepts. Shimada-san wipes a non-existent tear from his right eye and sniffles. “They grow up so fast.”
Tadashi downs half the bottle and rolls his eyes. “Look who’s going gray, old man.”
“That Tsukishima kid’s a bad influence on you.”
“I bet they used to say the same about you and Takinoue-san.”
Shimada-san dismisses the idea with a wave of his hand. “Yuusuke is harmless.”
He thinks about the time Kei got into an argument with a middle schooler about whether or not Godzilla should be considered a dinosaur and says, “So is Tsukki.”
“Why’d you come here today?” Tadashi is asked.
He takes a seat on an empty storage crate and tosses the bottle back and forth in his hands. There’s something to be said here—about liminal spaces, personal growth, and the part-time application for Shimada Mart neatly folded in his pocket—but all he manages is, “Thank you for the last three years, sensei.”
Shimada-san ruffles his hair. “No one’s dying.”
“Sure feels like it,” Tadashi grumbles, batting away his hand. “You’d come to my funeral, right?” He can’t remember, all of a sudden, if he ever told his parents about the man who offered him a spear and taught him how to use it. Kei would remember to invite him, wouldn’t he?
“I’ll bring flowers,” Shimada-san offers. “Any preferences?”
Tadashi hums thoughtfully. “I’ve always liked those blue flowers that you have.”
“They’re morning glories.”
“You happen to know what they mean?”
“Look it up if you want.” Shimada-san gestures for him to scoot over. “I think that’s enough funeral talk for today.”
“Guess I’ll plan it myself.”
His mentor snorts. “You teenagers are so melodramatic. Come on, now.” It’s a tight fit, but he takes a seat next to Tadashi and bumps their shoulders together. “There’s more to life than volleyball.”
“I know that,” Tadashi says. He fiddles with the loose end of a strip of sports tape until it comes off his ring finger. “You think I don’t know that? I know that, I just—”
—thought I’d have more time.
He lets out a frustrated sigh. “Am I making the right choice?”
“You can always change your mind.” Shimada-san smiles, the way adults so often do when they know something that you don’t. “And it doesn’t have to be joining your university or neighborhood team. It could just be playing with your friends again.”
He takes a look around him and memorizes every stain, every crack, every tuft of grass that sprouts from the concrete. “I don’t want it to end,” Tadashi whispers. The bottle in his hand crinkles. “Even if we’d won, I…”
Back in first year, Tadashi asked Kei, what more do we need than pride?
He’s not so sure, now. When the spring comes, Tadashi will be a few train stations away in his university dorm while his Karasuno jersey remains hung in his bedroom closet. When the spring comes, the cherry blossoms will bloom and it will be beautiful. But it’s winter, still, and the cold bites his fingertips.
Shimada-san gets up with creaky knees and strides over to Tadashi’s ball. “Thank you for the last three years,” he echoes. He spins it twice in his hands before sending it Tadashi’s way.
Tadashi fumbles to catch it, digging the tips of his fingers into the side of the ball before placing it on his lap and holding his head down. “No one’s dying,” he retorts, but it falls flat when the words get caught over the lump in his throat. Something wet pitters onto synthetic leather, but the sun shines bright in his eyes when he looks up. He brings a hand up to his face, mouth curling around an, “Oh.”
In middle school, his mother signed off on his volleyball club application without a second thought. His father mistakenly got him bright white tennis shoes, and Tadashi wore them anyway. To have this…
“You did well, Tadashi.”
“Don’t you have a store to be running, sensei?” Tadashi asks with a sniffle. He takes a steadying breath. “I think I’m gonna… I’m gonna hit a few more serves.”
“Volleyball isn’t going anywhere.” Shimada-san rests a hand on his head, and the weight of it keeps Tadashi tethered to this moment. “And you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
Tadashi lurches forward and tackles his mentor into a hug. The ball tumbles to the ground as his hands find purchase on Shimada-san’s apron. “Thank you, sensei,” Tadashi chokes out. And again, because he can’t say it enough, “Thank you for everything. I had a lot of fun.”
“My store is always open,” Shimada-san reminds him.
He tries for a wobbly smile and says, “Not on New Years.”