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There’s a pretty girl, eyes sparkling against her thin spectacles, her hair swaying as she gracefully walked. The beauty mark near her mouth accentuates the slight pinkish skin and the way she purses her lips.
Instinctually, Yuuji knows this girl is the one. He asks for her number, watching as she declines it, but Yuuji is not used to giving up after wanting something. He may not live with a silver spoon, but what the hell, his dad taught him to go after whatever he wants no matter what, and that’s what Yuuji will do right now.
He doesn’t get the pretty girl’s number–she’s from Karasuno, their future opponent, he finds out later–but it doesn’t make him perturbed, just adding the loss to the list of losses he already acquired. They don’t really mean much. Losses don’t motivate him to go after the next desire that gets triggered.
Perhaps he doesn’t take life that seriously, just like what Hana keeps telling him.
“I don’t see the point in being too serious when we’re all going to die anyway,” he blurts out when asked why he’s always playful, childish, someone who doesn’t act like his age.
“How are you going to achieve the things you want?” asks Hana, lips thinned, unimpressed. She worries her bottom lip, worries about Yuuji and his antics. Yuuji doesn’t understand it. If you don’t get what you want, then go after the next one on the list.
“I just do or I don’t.” Yuuji shrugs then picks up the volleyball, gesturing at both Takeharu and Kazuma to play with him. “It doesn’t really matter.”
“It does,” insists Hana, hands placed on her hips as if to reprimand him. Yuuji knows this is just Hana trying to seem like the senior she wants to be. “When will you start thinking about your future? Or about anything at all?”
“I do think. About fun things.”
“You know what I’m talking about, Terushima Yuuji.”
Yuuji just shrugs and flashes her a bright smile. He points at the volleyball and says, “I do think about volleyball. And my future. Just that, why bother overthinking about things?”
Ignoring Hana’s displeased look, he runs towards his friends, waving the volleyball like a child that came out of a cage. In his defense, talking to Hana feels like a cage and he finds it easier to breath when she’s not talking to him anymore.
“Who wants to have some fun?!” he yells.
The whole team cheers with him.
***
He doesn’t really know when fun stopped being fun.
If he’s to pinpoint one specific thing, it can be when they lost to Karasuno High, with Yuuji clutching the remnants of what he considered real fun for a few minutes before the ball drops, hitting the ground with a loud thud. Then the whistle blows, and he sees the shock and happiness flooding from the opposite court. Yuuji can’t remember the specifics–he doesn’t bother with the details because they make his head spin–but the clenching inside his chest, the tenseness of his shoulders, and the watering of his eyes point out to the first time he felt something after a loss: the harsh, cruel clutch of that blasted frustration.
Or it can be when they went back to the normalcy of going to school after that life-changing tournament where Yuuji’s heart starts beating faster whenever he steps inside the volleyball court. And in a way, he does remember that captain that seemed the opposite of him.
Yuuji isn’t really jealous, no, he loves himself and his playfulness. He just wishes he can have some of those opposite traits too. Just a little bit. He doesn’t want to be Sawamura Daichi, a stable force of nature that roots his teammates. He wants to be Terashima Yuuji, still Terashima Yuuji who laughs and plays for fun and energizes his teammates, but better, better at volleyball, at spiking and receiving balls that almost seemed impossible to receive. And yes, time is ticking so fast, and maybe he has really wasted too much time already, but Yuuji knows that dwelling on regrets will waste even more time. So, he spikes, jumps higher than his usual playful stance. Then with sweaty hands and face, he repeatedly and cruelly subjects himself to receiving drills. Then he serves, nasty jump ones that he saw that genius setter make, and they don’t make the cut, going out of the court, too far from the desired destination. Yuuji tries, and in turn, his team tries with him.
They still have fun, still tumble around and bumble around inside the court like the animals that they are–pride wouldn’t stop them from being the adventurous pirates waiting for a new ship to loot treasures and golds. But Yuuji can see less cracks, and more foundation. It’s nothing much. He still isn’t Sawamura Daichi, but it works, and he doesn’t want to be a carbon copy of him anyway.
It works because fun starts being fun again.
Yuuji can’t handle it if fun starts turning painful too.
***
Third year rolls around like a breeze and Yuuji hasn’t really won to go to Nationals. They don’t make the cut, nor do they actually win enough to become a very significant team. They’re regarded as strong, sure, but Yuuji knows it doesn’t really matter when they’re not included in the top four schools of the prefecture. A part of him secretly cares, but Yuuji just brushes it off.
He really has no regrets.
(Or maybe he has, but Yuuji has long accepted that they’re just part of whatever life is.)
Maybe he can still play volleyball. Try to win a few more tournaments in college and make a name for himself. Or maybe he can just randomly browse listings of courses from different colleges. Pick a course that’s easy enough to pass and navigate through life focused on fun and easy.
“When has fun ever been easy?” he asks Kazuma and Takeharu who both shrug at him.
Kazuma sends him a half-hearted grin. “Maybe in high school, I guess.”
“Volleyball is hard.” Takeharu raises both his arms defensively. “You two, don’t look at me like that. I’m not monsters like you two are. But despite that, I really had so much fun these past three years, and I’d never choose to not experience it just because it’s hard.”
“And painful,” adds Kazuma.
Takeharu throws his head back and laughs, patting the two of them on the shoulder. “Painful on the body, definitely. I always get knocked out when I go home. Clocked out on bed and I kept forgetting dinner. My mom scolds me a lot.”
For the first time in his life, Yuuji stops making baseless decisions and starts to think.
“I think I might need to take my time before choosing a college degree,” he says resignedly.
Kazuya and Takeharu both look at him in surprise before expressing their agreements and support. Yuuji is grateful they’re his friends. Not just because it’s fun. They never ask Yuuji to be someone else, and for that, Yuuji is thankful.
He doesn’t decide immediately. Yuuji forgets about college for a small while, busy testing out the taste of beer and wine and gin at nearby bars and restaurants after working part-time in a convenience store. He sometimes winds up spending so much time playing inside the arcade, betting against high schoolers two years younger than him just for the heck of it because, what the hell, he can’t be a kid anymore in college.
Then he somehow ends up at the outskirts of Tokyo, just lounging around and waiting for a friend he made after losing a bet a few weeks ago, when he sees his reflection in the mirror and realizes oh, I don’t want this kind of hair anymore. He runs as fast as he can to the nearest hair salon and pushes the door open, greeting hurriedly in his loud, boisterous voice before sitting in one of the chairs. He doesn’t bother to check if he has enough money for it or if his friend is sending him hundreds of texts, asking where he is. All he has in his mind is one thing: he wants a new hairstyle.
“New here?” asks a deep voice, a woman’s voice but deep nonetheless, brushing the strands of his fading blonde hair with a lovely smile on her face. Yuuji considers trying to get her number, but then he realizes that this woman isn’t really his type much, so he just pouts and points at his hair, saying, “Yeah, pretty lady, and I need a new haircut.”
The woman laughs, her tinkling voice sending Yuuji’s heart hammering inside his chest. But it’s not out of a romantic anything, no. It’s the scissors, those sharp blades decorated with crown-like designs that make him eye her nervously.
“Doesn’t that look like a kid’s scissors?”
“Oh, this?” The woman raises the scissors on her hand and another laugh escapes her mouth, this time more filled with mirth. “This is nothing. Just a funny gift my brother bought me. He’s such an angel, honestly. I want to pinch his cheeks.”
Yuuji finds a bit of familiarity in the gaze looking at him though he can’t pinpoint why. Shrugging, he ignores the instinct to act for now, his desire to get his haircut, finally, winning over his desire to be nosy over minor details he probably doesn’t need to know. Perhaps a younger Terashima Yuuji would ask, no holds barred, and end up seeming immature again.
Not this Yuuji though. He’s ready to become an adult.
“So, what brings you here in Tokyo?”
Yuuji shrugs, eyes flitting at the snips of the blades on his tuffs, eyebrows furrowing and irises alight with interest. “Fun and adventure. The last days of youth, maybe.” He then watches as she grabs the strands with poise and starts cutting it with accuracy, the sounds of blade meeting blade echoing hollowly in his ears, as if it’s the only thing he can hear. “I’m about to become an adult, you see.”
The woman stares at him with curiosity. Then she grins, sharp and teasing. “Oh, are you one of those types who lived their high school life doing nothing but leisure and realizing life isn’t like that so now you’re going in the opposite direction.”
Yuuji gapes his mouth at her, his eyes widening in shock. “How did you know, the hell?!” he exclaimed, flabbergasted. “Are you a freaking seer or something even cooler?!”
The woman nods in satisfaction. “See, this is the real you, an excitable force of a kid that’s about to see hell.”
Yuuji sends her a pout. “You got me. I’m a kid, so what?”
There’s something about the image of the hairs slowly falling from the blade that sends Yuuji’s mind spinning. It makes him wonder if Kazuma would look better with a shorter haircut or if Takeharu would seem cooler had he chosen a lighter shade of red on his hair. It makes him think about the possibilities of fun and colors and wow, there’s so much beauty in here.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a kid, you know,” she reminds him, gently brushing the strands of his hair with her small comb, her eyes looking at him with understanding. “As long as you understand that sometimes you have to shut it down for a little while until play time comes again.”
Yuuji just nods, still enthralled by the way she expertly twists the scissors, snipping the strands like an instinct. He doesn’t say anything, and he just observes because looking at her cutting his hair is fun.
“You don’t have to say goodbye to being a kid just to be an adult,” she adds, and Yuuji just nods, too distracted by her scissors.
“Okay,” he blurts out. “Can you teach me how to cut someone’s hair? And color stuff and all that? Because I really want to learn it. It looks so fun!”
Taken aback, the woman blinks then she laughs, louder than ever, her head thrown back in amusement. “You want to learn from yours truly?”
Yuuji nods fervently, a grin spreading across his face.
“Alright,” she says after a moment of laughing so hard, and Yuuji doesn’t understand why she’s muttering how much of a demon she is at teaching, but he can’t really care less, can he?
When college applications come around, he writes a fuck you, I’m still a kid at the papers and slings his bag with a huge smile on his face, his mind racing about scissors and hairs and the ticket to Tokyo sitting atop his desk, waiting for its owner to finally become an adult.
(He does become one, a fairly good one, if he might say so.)