Chapter Text
Hinata could still remember the last sound he ever heard.
It wasn't a beautiful sound, or one that he wished he'd ever heard; but it was that sound which had defined the rest of his life, permeating everything he did from then till forever. Now, he heard it in everything, the echoes of a memory that was always on repeat in the back of his mind. At first, it had been disorienting; he was eight when it happened, so he had to re-learn everything he'd known about life up to that point. He could still function, for the most part, but the main issue was communication.
He started by teaching Natsu sign language; since she was the youngest in his family, she caught on much faster than his parents. For a while, she acted as a stand-in translator of sorts, though Hinata himself had to put forth a lot of effort to learn this new language he would depend on for the rest of his life. But he was nothing if not dedicated, and with Natsu's help he had become fluent in just over a year.
The problem was, not many people knew how to sign, unless they had some explicit reason to learn. As a result, he was never able to make many friends in school, and the few people who did put forth an effort to learn soon grew tired of the work they had to put in, and gave up. His friends he'd had in grade school did try, but they'd gone to different schools so they'd gradually lost touch.
Throughout middle school, he mostly had Natsu to keep him company. By then, his parents were also fairly fluent, but Natsu was by far the best at communicating with Hinata. She was the one who'd given him his sign name, positioning her hand into the sign for S and holding it next to her right eye. She later told him she'd done that because his eyes had always been her favourite feature of his; and even though his hearing had gone, the sparkle in his eyes hadn't.
Another thing that wouldn't leave was that noise, the last thing he'd ever heard. He wasn't entirely sure what it was, but it was something like the grating of metal against metal; like nails on a chalkboard, but a thousand times more painful and intense. According to the doctors, that sound was what had caused his eardrums to rupture in the first place. Well, that and the fact that he'd been hit in the side of the head with the yield sign that the other driver had clearly not been paying attention to. But either way, it was all the same to him.
That was when he was first enraptured with volleyball; his family had been watching the national team play a match against America, and one player in particular instantly caught his eye. He was know as the Small Giant, and Hinata was inspired by his passion. He was impressed, that even though he couldn't hear a single thing the Small Giant said in the interviews, Hinata could feel the love for the sport that defined everything he did. It made him fall in love with it, too.
So he practised. He didn't have anyone to play with, besides Natsu (who was less than coordinated) but he didn't much care. He had too much pent up energy, and built up frustration from not being able to talk to anyone besides his family, and he held onto volleyball in the hope that one day he would be able to convey his feelings on the court just like he'd seen the Small Giant do. He never saw the Small Giant play another match, but he didn't really think he needed to.
From then on, he vowed to become the next Small Giant.