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As uninteresting as it was, everything started the day Shimizu Kiyoko met Sugawara Koushi. There had been no fireworks and no epiphanies, just a shy girl looking at a boy with a beautiful smile and thinking that it was a nice sight, and then thinking the same thing for the next three years, but paying more attention to the details each time, like the way he sometimes closed his eyes when he grinned, and how sometimes it seemed like his whole body was part of the smile (head held high, the corners of his eyes crinkling, shoulders relaxed), making it even nicer, until one day she thought she’d like to be the cause of that smile.
All that had come from the realization had been a painful amount of pining.
There is a second beginning shortly before graduating high school.
Oikawa Tooru accidentally runs into Kiyoko in Tokyo, while she’s looking around what will be her university very soon, and when he sees her he smiles in a way that would be nice if Kiyoko trusted him. Since she doesn’t, the closed eyes and the apparent friendliness only put her on edge.
“Manager-chan!” he greets, practically skipping towards her. “What are you doing here? Will you be coming here in April?”
“Oikawa-san, hello,” Kiyoko says, lowering her head slightly. “Yes, I’ll be studying here.”
“Me too! What a nice coincidence, right?” he says, looking genuinely delighted by the situation.
She nods noncommittally and reminds herself that he’s just a guy she knows from volleyball matches, so maybe he is a very likeable person when he isn’t trying to bring down your team’s morale.
“Tell me, Manager-chan, what’s your name? I can’t keep calling you ‘Manager-chan’ if we might keep seeing each other around.”
“Shimizu Kiyoko.”
“Wow, what a beautiful name! So, Kiyoko-chan, what will you study?”
“Business and management. And you?”
“Yes, I’m sure you’d be great at that. I’m going into sports science, but I’m mostly here for the volleyball team.” At that, his smile turns sharper, like he’s already planning all the matches he’ll play in. If what little she has heard about him is true, maybe he is already preparing for them.
For a moment, Kiyoko considers asking him if they’ll need a manager.
“And what brings you here today, Kiyoko-chan?”
“I wanted to get acquainted with the area before classes start, and to get a better look at the dorms.”
“Really?” Oikawa-san says, actually clapping once. Kiyoko’s a bit impressed by how exaggeratedly bright this guy can be. “Me too! But there’s an apartment close by that’s really affordable. I’ve been looking at it for ages, and I was supposed to rent it with Iwa-chan, but he ditched me at the last second to go to another city to study, can you believe him? So now I can’t live there, but the owner says that he’ll wait a couple more days for me to find a flatmate before he puts it on rent again and now I’m trying to figure out if they’d let me put signs around here to get a roommate, and…” he trails off and looks at Kiyoko. “Tell me, Kiyoko-chan, have you already picked a place to live in?”
Kiyoko really doesn’t like where this is going.
“No, not yet.”
“Would you like to be my roommate?”
Kiyoko blinks a couple of times and opens her mouth to politely decline the offer, but then he seems to realize what she’s worrying about and he starts trying to fix the situation.
“No second intentions, Kiyoko-chan, I swear! It’s just that it’s a very nice place, and it’s not too far from here and the price is very good but that’s only because the owner knows my mom, and if you want we can put an extra lock on your door so you can only open it from the inside, and I promise you I don’t want anything from you other than being your roommate!”
“Why me?" Kiyoko asks warily. "Weren’t you going to put signs around?”
“Yes, but I know you! Or, you know, I know you better than anybody else that might answer the ad. And you seem like the type that will do her share of the chores,” he says, his arms extended in front of him, palms up, as if he’s offering his sincerity.
“I’m not sure that’s a very good idea, Oikawa-san.”
“Would you at least see the apartment with me? I can call the owner so we can take a look now.”
Kiyoko likes to believe she is a relatively smart girl. In order to maintain that idea of herself, she should decline Oikawa-san’s offer and walk away, but… Well, she’s curious, and she thinks Oikawa-san’s being sincere.
“Okay,” she says.
He smiles at her, no teeth showing, but still wide enough that he has to close his eyes. It reminds her a bit of Sugawara-san.
The apartment has two small bedrooms, each with just enough space for a bed, a desk, and her clothes and books (if she keeps them in plastic boxes under the bed), and with a huge window that fills the room with bright, white daylight and makes Kiyoko feel slightly less caged (she suspects she’ll roast to death in summer, though). The kitchen isn’t big either, and the division between it and the living room is just a counter that doubles as pantry, but in exchange for the small kitchen they have a living room big enough for a sofa, a couple of chairs and a TV. The bathroom isn’t cramped, Kiyoko shouldn’t be at risk of bumping her toes against the toilet seat while drying herself, and the only worry Kiyoko has about it is the fact that it’s only one bathroom and she doesn’t know what Oikawa’s morning habits are like (she’s betting on at least half an hour spent applying different hair products).
She feels tricked when she’s told the price, especially when she looks at Oikawa-san’s smug face, like he knew she wouldn’t want to say no after seeing the place and hearing how much it costs. A room to herself sounds perfect, and not having to worry about curfew, and having someplace to invite friends to…
Kiyoko gives Okawa-san a long, serious look, and he just smiles and shrugs.
“What do you think, Kiyoko-chan?”
“You will have to meet my parents,” she says, smirking.
Oikawa-san looks like that was the last thing he’d expected to hear.
Oikawa-san has Kiyoko’s parents wrapped around his finger after just ten minutes. He'd started with flowers and food, won them over by praising Kiyoko and pretending they’d become good friends through texts after the spring tournament, and then, to make sure they’d have no qualms about letting their daughter live with a guy (an attractive guy) they’d just met, he started on a long speech about his undying devotion for his lovely girlfriend Hajime-chan, the girl of his life.
Kiyoko didn’t know that Oikawa-san was dating someone, even if logic told her that he must have been, but there is something in the description of the girl that sounds familiar to Kiyoko. When, fifteen minutes later, she remembers where she has heard the name ‘Hajime’, she snorts and has to cover it up with fake coughing. Oikawa-san looks at her out of the corner of his eye and winks, and that nearly makes Kiyoko start laughing again.
“About ‘Hajime-chan’…” Kiyoko starts when she accompanies Oikawa-san to the door.
He grins. “He’s just not my type. But I know him enough to make a good poetic description.”
“They’ll probably want to meet her someday.”
“Luckily for us, dear Hajime-chan’s going to study very far from here. The distance will prove too much for us and we’ll break up.” He shrugs with one shoulder. “I’ll be so heartbroken that I won’t mention her again.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Kiyoko says, with just the hint of a smirk on her face.
Kiyoko thinks for a long time whether or not to give anyone the news that she’ll be sharing an apartment with Oikawa-san, but eventually she figures out that it’ll be better if they find out from her than from him, and so she mentions it during casual conversation on graduation day.
The former members of the volleyball club have gathered at the gym for a final goodbye, to talk to everyone and give and receive good wishes, and when Sugawara-san asks her where she’ll be living in, she tells him.
“What?!” he says, too loud, making heads turn.
Kiyoko looks to the ground and resists the temptation to fidget.
“What happened?” Azumane-san asks.
“I asked her where she’s going to live,” Sugawara-san says, looking at her like he thinks she’s crazy. She probably is.
“I’ll be living in an apartment near the university with Oikawa-san,” she explains.
Everyone reacts in a similar manner to Sugawara-san. She can’t blame them.
“Are you sure? Did he do something to you? Did he brainwash you or something?” Hinata-kun asks, looking genuinely concerned. At his side, Kageyama-kun looks terrified.
“It’s fine. We’ve already talked about this.”
“Kiyoko-san, you can’t do this!” Nishinoya-kun says, almost falling to his knees.
“Didn’t he try to hit on you once?” Sawamura-san asks, frowning.
“I don’t think that’s what he’s trying to do now.”
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
“It’ll be fine.”
Sawamura-san, Azumane-san and Sugawara-san share a worried look. Tanaka-kun seems to be begging in the background.
“When are you moving in?” Sugawara-san asks.
“This weekend.”
“Do you need help?” he says, smiling kindly and Kiyoko’s almost fooled that this isn’t just an attempt to get an idea of how safe she’ll be.
Sugawara-san gets his mom’s car and drives Kiyoko and her belongings to Tokyo. The conversation’s light, and it consists mostly of Sugawara-san telling her about places in the city that he’s heard of from Yaku-san. Apparently, they’ve been texting each other for a while.
“Many of the Nekoma players are staying for college, so if you need anything I’m sure they’ll help,” Sugawara-san says when they reach the apartment.
Oikawa-san’s already there, and after they’ve unloaded the car, he and Kiyoko start putting things in place as Sugawara-san tries to find a place to park.
“Tell me, Kiyoko-chan,” Oikawa-san asks as they make the list of things they need to buy, “should I be offended that you like Sugawara instead of me?”
Kiyoko nearly drops the pen she’s holding.
“Don’t be so surprised, you were practically ogling him earlier. Nice arms, by the way.”
“I wasn’t-”
“Kiyoko-chan, please. We’re going to be living together for a while. Let’s not lie to each other when things are obvious, okay?” He raises an eyebrow and looks back to the list. “I can live without a TV, and we can use that money for curtains.”
Sugawara-san arrives shortly after. Kiyoko doesn’t look at him, and instead looks at Oikawa-san: he's looking Sugawara-san up and down and seems to be appreciating the view.
The next day, Oikawa-san and Kiyoko go to buy what they need. Their parents have given them money to finish furbishing the apartment, and they’ve mutually agreed that they need a good couch, something comfortable enough to collapse on at the end of the day.
Oikawa-san calls Iwaizumi-san two days later, when everything arrives, and makes him come to the apartment the next day to help put the couch together, hang the curtains, and make the place seem like somewhere people actually live in. Kiyoko calls Sugawara-san after Oikawa-san had spent the entire previous afternoon nagging her about it.
“I am so sorry about this,” Iwaizumi-san says after the couch is in its place. “I don’t know what he did to get you to room with him, and I wish I’d been there to stop him, but for future reference, all you have to do is get firm and he’ll leave you alone.”
“Iwa-chan, you’re going to scare her!”
“Good,” Iwaizumi-san says. “The sooner she learns how to deal with you, the better. Really, Shimizu-san,” he says, looking into Kiyoko’s eyes so earnestly that for a moment she almost forgets her crush on Sugawara-san, “you don’t have to suffer him. If you need anything, call me.”
“Why does she get to call you? You told me not to bother you unless the apartment was on fire!”
“She has to share breathing space with you. She needs everyone’s help.”
“So mean, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa-san says without any real feeling. Iwaizumi-san doesn’t even seem to hear him.
Just then, the doorbell rings and Oikawa-san goes to get the door.
“Thank you for your help, Iwaizumi-san,” Kiyoko says.
“It’s no problem,” he replies as Oikawa-san opens the door.
Sugawara-san enters, carrying coffee and a bag from a nearby bakery that Kiyoko had been meaning to check out soon.
“I don’t think you’ll have time for a proper housewarming party,” Sugawara-san says, leaving everything on the counter, “so I thought we could improvise.”
“You’re the best. Sorry, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa-san says as he takes out the bag’s contents: a whole cake, plus a box of macarons.
“You can keep him. I’m keeping Shimizu-san,” Iwaizumi-san says, giving Kiyoko a look that asks if the joke is okay. She nods and smirks. He leans towards her and whispers, “I need to ask you a favor. Can you take care of him?” He looks serious, like he couldn’t ask her for anything more important than that, and so she knows that this isn’t something she can promise lightly.
“I’ll do my best.”
“Thank you, Shimizu-san.”
Sugawara-san turns to them as they’re talking, heads close and voices barely audible, sharing a look of absolute agreement and understanding, and he suddenly doesn’t seem to be that comfortable. He stands a bit closer to Kiyoko, and she hopes that this means something, but she wants to hide behind the couch when Oikawa-san, with the subtlety of a bull in a church, drags Iwaizumi-san out of the apartment for a tour of the building.
“You and Iwaizumi… Was Oikawa jealous?” Sugawara-san asks after the door has closed behind Oikawa-san.
“I don’t think so. I think he just wants some attention from Iwaizumi-san before he leaves,” Kiyoko says.
“So he’s jealous,” he says, in a teasing tone.
She shrugs.
“Thank you for coming today,” she says to change the subject.
“Thank you for inviting me. I don’t think you’ll ever get bored living with Oikawa.”
“Probably not.” She looks at the door and glances at Sugawara-san out of the corner of her eye. “You can…” she says, barely audible. She clears her throat and tries again. “You can come here whenever you want.”
“Thank you, Shimizu-san.”
“I- I mean it.” She brushes her hair behind her ear and turns to look at him. “It’s not just for courtesy.”
The smile he gives her is the same one that might have made her start crushing on him so long ago: bright, honest, and so delighted that she feels like the most important person in the world.
“Then I’ll be sure to come here whenever I can,” he says.
Later, Oikawa-san asks her about Sugawara-san. He’s curled on the couch, his legs drawn to his chest and his chin resting on his knees. Kiyoko’s on the floor, sorting through all the blankets her mom sent her when she heard that Sugawara-san would be visiting, and she tells him almost everything (she leaves out Iwaizumi-san’s request) without looking at him, because she can feel his eyes on her, studying her.
“He likes you,” Oikawa-san says, turning to rest his back on the armrest and stretch his legs on the couch. Kiyoko throws a blanket to his legs. “That wasn’t necessary, Kiyoko-chan! I’m just saying what I think!”
“It’s for your feet. The couch is new.”
“Oh.” He blinks and looks down at the blanket again. “Okay, then.” He puts his feet on the blanket and looks at her again, eyes too wide, trying to look innocent. “He’s saying he’ll come to visit you again, Kiyoko-chan. Whenever he can. And he’s in Miyaji. Studying. Do you know how much time he’s going to need for that? He likes you.”
“He was just being nice.”
“Yes, yes.” He makes a dismissive gesture. “He’s going to be here soon, I’m sure of it. And when you start dating I want you to come here and tell me, ‘Tooru-chan, you were right, he was totally into me’.” He tries to imitate her for that, lowering his voice, but that’s as far as the similarity ends, because he makes his voice too high-pitched, he bats his eyelashes, and he plays with a lock of hair.
Kiyoko cringes.
“Okay, probably not like that,” he says, shrugging.
“Do you really want me to call you ‘Tooru-chan’?” she asks after a moment, still looking somewhat pained.
“I call you ‘Kiyoko-chan’.”
“Without my permission.”
“Does it bother you?”
She presses her lips and doesn’t reply.
“Can I keep doing it anyway?”
She still doesn’t say anything.
“You can call me ‘Tooru-chan’. Or ‘Oikawa-chan’.”
“I think ‘Oikawa-san’ is fine.”
“Oh, okay.” He rests his head on the couch’s backrest, stretching his neck too much for him to really be comfortable in that position.
Kiyoko hasn’t forgotten that Oikawa-san had tried to hit on her, and since the moment she accepted the invitation to live together she has been waiting for him to try something again. She’s not sure what she’s going to do then, since it’s probably a bit late to try to get a room in the dorms, so she can’t leave, and Hitoka-chan’s suggestion that she should simply avoid him all the time so he can never get a chance to try to ask her out seems a bit extreme.
She panics a bit when he asks her for her schedule the day before classes start, and relaxes when he continues talking to say that they need to set a schedule for chores, and that he sucks at cooking so he’s already gotten the numbers of every single take-out place he’s heard good things about. Kiyoko quickly finds out that that’s good thing, because the Italian restaurant he buys from on the first night of class has the best lasagna she’s ever eaten.
Oikawa-san starts practicing with the university’s volleyball club immediately, and Kiyoko gets to see first-hand how much dedication he puts into the sport. She’d expected him to take it easy at the start, but after arriving from his first practice he sits down on the living room floor, notebook and laptop and pens around him, and he spends two hours analyzing a video of the team’s latest match, writing down notes with different colors.
When Kiyoko puts a cup of tea by his side, he startles and looks around in confusion, like he had forgotten where he was.
“You need a break,” she says, sitting on the couch.
“I’ll take one later.”
“You’ve been staring at that screen for two hours. You’ll end up needing glasses.”
“Ah, I knew you cared, Kiyoko-chan,” he says, smiling at her. She knows that smile, it’s the one he gave his fans, and she doesn’t like it at all.
For reasons she isn’t entirely sure of, the next words out of Kiyoko’s mouth are, “Does the team need a manager?”
Oikawa-san looks at her from over the rim of his cup in a way she can’t decipher.
“I don’t think so. But if you volunteer I’m sure they’d like to have you.”
“Hm,” is all Kiyoko has to say, and sets her eyes on the empty wall in front of the sofa. “We need to put something there.”
“We can get a TV if we save money. Do you want a TV?”
Kiyoko twists her lips in a noncommittal expression.
“I’d like a TV,” he continues.
“You’ll just use it to watch volleyball matches.”
“I can see those online. I want the TV for movies. And videogames.”
Kiyoko thinks it over. It’d be fun to have someone to play with, and Oikawa-san probably has different taste in movies from her, so he might show her something interesting.
“Maybe we could get a TV,” she says.
Oikawa-san’s smile could light up the room. Kiyoko briefly wonders if she’d be blinded if Oikawa-san and Sugawara-san smiled at her at the same time.
Kiyoko’s a light sleeper, and for the rest of the week she hears Oikawa-san go to bed around 1 or 2 in the morning (closer to 2, actually), and getting up every day at 6 for a morning run. He returns just as she’s getting out of the bathroom and he’s always ready by the time she’s finished breakfast, so they leave the apartment together. With each passing day he looks more tired, and by Friday morning Kiyoko wants to make him skip class and go back to bed.
In the afternoon, she’s ready to call Iwaizumi-san to get his help in staging an intervention, but the idea of telling him she didn’t know what to do after just one week is embarrassing. If Iwaizumi-san had trusted her to look after Oikawa-san, it meant he’d thought she could do it, right?
Oikawa-san gets home around 6:30, and sits on the couch. He has a habit Kiyoko noticed quickly: the first thing he does after getting home is sitting on one side of the sofa, curled onto himself, legs drawn to his chest, head resting on his knees, and he slowly begins relaxing, until his head’s resting on the backrest, his legs are extended in front of him and his hands are crossed on his abdomen - only then does he get up and start working. Today, instead of getting out his laptop or his books and sitting by the kitchen counter to study, he serves himself a glass of juice and returns to the couch, looking calmer with each passing minute. Kiyoko, already sitting by the counter with her class notes, can’t help but watch the process with interest.
Around 7:15, Oikawa-san gets up, washes the glass, and wishes her a good night.
He gets up at 6 the next morning. Against her better judgment, Kiyoko gets out of bed early as well, just to know if last night’s sleep helped him.
She thinks he looks good when he walks into the apartment just as she’s getting out of the bathroom.
Kiyoko ends up joining the volleyball club. She’d actually missed helping, and she tells as much to Sugawara-san, who she takes for a walk around campus when he visits on the second week.
“It messes up my studying schedule a bit, but…” She doesn’t know how to continue that sentence, so she doesn’t.
“You got here even when you were also managing Karasuno,” Sugawara-san says, looking at her with so much pride she almost blushes, “this is nothing.”
“I didn’t have to deal with Oikawa-san then.”
“Is he that bad?”
“He’s not bad, I barely notice him. But he…” Kiyoko isn’t sure she’s supposed to say anything else. Oikawa-san’s habits are his, and that she knows them is only a side effect of living together, what right does she have to explain them to Sugawara-san? “He works too hard,” she says.
“Are you worried?” Sugawara-san says, looking so sympathetic that she wishes she could ask him for help.
She looks down and nods.
“You can’t ask him not to. Anyway, he’s not your responsibility.”
“Still…”
“Yes, I know. He’s right there, you can’t help but notice.” He sighs. “You’re very kind, Shimizu-san.”
Her heart starts beating so fast at those words that she thinks it’s going to tear a hole through her chest.
Oikawa-san insists on going for dinner at a South American restaurant that he’d apparently found during one of his morning runs. Sugawara-san asks for something spicy that has Oikawa-san crying when he steals a bit, and he ends up drinking Kiyoko’s water bottle besides his own, flailing and whining, while Sugawara-san laughs at his antics. Kiyoko covers her mouth as she laughs as well, but it ends quickly, because as soon as she starts, both Oikawa-san and Sugawara-san turn to look at her with matching surprised expressions.
“So pretty, Kiyoko-chan,” Oikawa-san says, looking a bit dazed, and then he steals Sugawara-san’s soda.
It’s rare that Oikawa-san’s schedule matches Kiyoko’s, but on Fridays both of them go to the volleyball club at the same time, and they return together, and some other days they wait for each other. Oikawa-san has also started picking her up when her classes end too late and it’s dark. Of course, it leads to people asking questions, or outright drawing conclusions.
“What do you mean with ‘we’re not dating’?” one of the other managers, Arisu-chan, asks on a Friday at the end of the second month, pointing at her with a pen. “He’s always waiting to walk you home, and you bring him sandwiches sometimes, and he practically jumps to get your attention when you show up.”
“We know each other from school.”
“Right.”
“Come on, they can’t be dating,” another manager, Rika-chan, says. “Look at them, they’re too pretty. It’s too much pretty together. The universe would implode.”
“That’s the dumbest theory I’ve ever heard,” Arisu-chan says. “According to that, movies wouldn’t exist.”
“Well, sorry, but every girl agrees that Oikawa’s the prettiest guy around. And you’ve gotta be blind not to think Kiyoko-chan’s pretty too.”
They keep talking as if Kiyoko wasn’t standing right there, so she takes the first chance she gets to move away from them.
Oikawa-san’s busy in a mini-game, and he doesn’t seem to notice her when she stands by the side to look. Only after the game is done does he look around, and when he sees her he grins and waves.
“What did you think, Kiyoko-chan?” he says, just a bit too loud.
“You were good,” Kiyoko replies, ignoring Arisu-chan, who’s standing behind Oikawa-san and giving her a thumbs-up.
They walk home together. They’re entering the apartment when Kiyoko gets a text from Sugawara-san, asking her if he can visit tomorrow.
“Say yes,” Oikawa-san says, reading over her shoulder.
“I have a test on Tuesday.”
“I’ll entertain him. We can have lunch with him and I’ll take him out so he doesn’t get bored.”
“I’m not sure,” Kiyoko says, going to her room. Oikawa-san follows her and sits on her bed.
After they started coming home together on Fridays, Oikawa-san moved his couch ritual to Kiyoko’s room. As far as Kiyoko knows, he doesn’t go into her room when she isn’t home, but on every other day he just opens the door without knocking and sits on her bed, legs drawn to his chest, and by the end he’s sprawled on the covers. Kiyoko would certainly appreciate it if he knocked, but other than that, she barely notices him: he doesn’t talk and he doesn’t ask for attention, just closes his eyes and lets her study or read.
Today, though, he seems determined to get her to listen to him.
“When was the last time you saw him? A year ago?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“Same thing.”
“I’m still not sure.”
“I miss him too. Make him come, you need to have lunch anyway. He can stay for dinner… maybe he can sleep over!”
“Oikawa-san…”
“I’ll invite him, then,” he says, taking out his own phone. She looks at him anxiously. “What? It’s my invitation, not yours. That way you don’t have to be responsible for him.”
Kiyoko could have tried harder to stop him, but she does want to see Sugawara-san, so she puts up enough resistance to make it believable and then focuses on her books as Oikawa-san texts Sugawara-san.
“Oikawa said you were studying, so I brought ramen,” Sugawara-san says, holding up a bag with take-out containers. “Going out to a restaurant takes too much time,” he adds when Kiyoko looks at the food in confusion.
“Definitely the best,” Oikawa-san says, taking the bag. “Go back to the books, Kiyoko-chan, we’ll call you for lunch.”
“That’s in, what, five minutes?” Sugawara-san says, narrowing his eyes at Oikawa-san. “She needs a break.”
The three of them go to the kitchen, which is too small for them, and somehow manage to take out the plates and cutlery and glasses without bumping into each other too many times. It probably means something that Sugawara-san already knows where everything is.
“You’re staying, aren’t you, Suga-chan?” Oikawa-san says.
“You invited me over,” Sugawara-san says. “I wasn’t carrying that backpack for show.
“Just making sure,” Oikawa-san says, shrugging.
They eat by the counter, elbows bumping, Sugawara-san sitting between Kiyoko and Oikawa-san. After lunch, Oikawa-san and Sugawara-san send Kiyoko to study as they clear the dishes.
She’s trying to write a summary of one of her book’s chapters when there’s a knock at her door.
“Come in!”
“Hi,” Sugawara-san says, stepping into her room slowly, like he isn’t sure he’s welcome. “We’re going out to leave you alone.”
“Thank you for coming,” she says, bowing her head.
“I like being here,” he says, grinning.
They return at dinnertime, bringing more take-out and carrying a teddy bear. A green teddy bear.
“For you, Kiyoko-chan,” Oikawa-san says, handing it to her. By his side, Sugawara-san’s carrying a stuffed duck.
“He got it into his head that we should find an arcade. And then he said we should get you something to cheer you on your studies. And then he said I deserved to get something too,” Sugawara-san says, holding up the duck. It looks very fluffy. “All I could get you was a lollipop,” he says, taking the candy out of his pants’ pocket and handing it to her. “But sugar’s good for your brain, so I guess I got you the better gift,” he says, smirking at Oikawa-san, who sticks out his tongue at him.
“Mine will last.”
“Thank you,” Kiyoko says, looking at each of them. “I like both gifts.”
“It’s okay for you to admit that mine’s better, Kiyoko-chan,” Oikawa-san says, giving her the bear. “By the way, he’s pitiful at arcade games.”
They eat dinner at the kitchen counter again, but Kiyoko sits in the middle this time, and acts as some sort of barrier for Oikawa-san’s and Sugawara-san’s playful banter. She listens to every word they say, and tries to remember everything about the moment.
Sugawara-san leaves on Sunday, after lunch. Oikawa-san goes with him to the station, and when he returns he knocks on Kiyoko’s door. That makes Kiyoko look away from her books to the door, waiting for him to come in, but he doesn’t.
“Yes?” she says after a whole minute has passed.
“It’s me.” He sounds tired.
“Come in.”
He looks confused when he enters her room, but he smiles when he sees her. She wants to ask what’s wrong, if something happened, but he lies down on her bed and closes his eyes.
“I just need a moment, Kiyoko-chan.”
“Are you-”
“I’m fine,” he interrupts her, too sharp. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off," he says, his voice softening. "But I’m fine. Really. I just need a moment.”
In ten minutes he gets up and leaves.
The next day, Oikawa-san gets up earlier than usual and leaves the apartment before she does.
It’s a strange week. Kiyoko isn’t sure what happened to Oikawa-san after leaving Sugawara-san at the train station, but he’s been avoiding her since then. He hasn’t returned to her room, he’s been leaving before she does every morning, he barely speaks to her when they're home, and she doesn’t know how to approach him. The only moments when everything is normal are during volleyball practice, when he treats her like he usually does and still turns to look at her after each match to ask her what she thinks of his performance, but the walks home are silent.
On Friday, Kiyoko can’t go to volleyball practice, though, because she has to finish her part of a group assignment, so she writes a note to let Oikawa-san know and sticks it to the fridge’s door on Thursday night. The next morning, there’s a smiley drawn on the note, so she guesses he read it.
She spends the afternoon at the university’s library, taking advantage of the silence and the aura of stress coming from every student around her to get into the right mood for working. She’s fast, but she still finishes late, and she’s slightly sorry she won’t get to walk home with Oikawa-san tonight, since even in his silence he made the trip feel shorter.
As she’s leaving the library, two guys approach her. Kiyoko knows them from class, but she’s never talked to them, and right now isn’t the moment she’d pick to start socializing.
They ask her what she’s doing later, if she’d like to go out with them, and while she’s sure they’re probably nice people, she also doesn’t want to be here, and she doesn’t like that they don’t listen when she tells them she has to go. They just keep talking, inviting her to karaoke, or maybe to get something to eat, and she’s excusing herself for the third time when she feels an arm around her shoulders.
Kiyoko tenses, but then Oikawa-san’s voice says, “Kiyoko-chan, we’re going to miss the movie!”
The guys look at her like they don’t understand where he came from, and the truth is that Kiyoko doesn’t know either. It’s almost 10 pm, and volleyball practice ended hours ago. There’s no reason for Oikawa-san to be there.
She looks up at him, and the way he’s staring at the two guys makes her nervous, because it’s the way he sometimes looked at Kageyama-kun – challenging, proud, just a bit hateful – and the arm around her is protective as much as it feels possessive.
Kiyoko almost feels offended, to be treated like a thing, but she’d be lying if she told herself she didn’t think of Oikawa-san as hers as well, when he curls on her bed or when he calls her from whichever take-out place he has picked and reads her the entire menu, or when he downloads a movie and they watch it in his room, sharing snacks and covering his bed with crumbs that he doesn’t want to clean afterwards.
She takes all of those moments and uses them to give warmth to her voice as she says, “I’m sorry, Tooru-kun.”
He tenses, she can feel it, but he immediately relaxes and turns to her with the most adoring smile she’s ever seen on his face.
“I think we can make it if we run.”
“Excuse me,” Kiyoko says to her two classmates. “I have plans for tonight.”
“It’s fine,” one of them says. The other one just gapes, because Oikawa-san has taken her hand in his and is softly pulling her to the door.
“Kiyoko-chaaaaaaan,” Oikawa-san whines.
She chuckles and follows him.
They walk a whole block with their hands linked before he lets go.
“I thought you’d be home already,” she says, curling into a fist the hand he’d held in an attempt to keep his warmth for a moment longer.
“I wasn’t going to let you walk home alone.”
“Were you waiting for long?”
“Yep. I spent like three hours sitting near the library and looking like a creep!”
“...you didn’t have to do that.”
“I did, actually. Sugawara-san told me to take care of you.”
Kiyoko turns to look at Oikawa-san’s profile. He’s pursing his lips, like he isn’t sure how he feels about the request, and Kiyoko looks to the ground. One part of herself is practically jumping and screaming, because Sugawara-san worries about me. The other part is lying on the ground and refusing to move, because Oikawa-san only looks after me because he was told to.
“You don’t have to listen to him,” she murmurs.
“I’d look after you even if he hadn’t told me to. We’re roommates, Kiyoko-chan! I’m sure you’d look after me even if Iwa-chan hadn’t asked you to.” She raises her head. He’s looking at her with a knowing smile. “Iwa-chan worries too much, it was obvious that he’d tell you to take care of me.”
“You work too hard,” she says, studying the curve of his lips, trying to determine the exact angle that makes it confident instead of pleased or happy. There must be a way to measure his moods.
“Good thing you’re looking after me, right?” he says, putting a hand on her shoulder.
She offers him a small smile.
He sits on her bed again tonight, and falls asleep there. Kiyoko doesn’t dare to wake him up, so she sets her alarm for 6am and leaves it on the nightstand, then gets some covers for him and goes to sleep in his room. She tries not to think about what tonight means, tries not to find any meaning in it, except that she liked holding Oikawa-san’s hand and she knows perfectly well what she’s feeling. She thinks of the curve of Sugawara-san’s smile, thinks about his last visit, and about the lollipop she hasn’t eaten yet, that she’s saving for a day when she needs to cheer herself up, and finds that her feelings for him haven’t changed. Does it make her a bad person, that she likes two people at the same time?
She buries her face in Oikawa-san’s pillow. Her own pillow probably smells like her, and she wonders if Oikawa-san will like waking up to her smell as much as she likes falling asleep to his.
At 6, she hears her alarm ringing in her room, and she gets up to let Oikawa-san get his clothes.
“I’m so sorry I kicked you out of your room, Kiyoko-chan,” he says when he sees her at his door.
“You were tired, Oikawa-san,” she says, going into her own room. He folded the covers and left them on her bed. He doesn’t seem to have touched anything.
“No ‘Tooru-kun’ today?” Kiyoko can hear the pout in his voice. “I liked that.”
She doesn’t reply and he doesn’t press the issue.
On the fourth month, they have finally saved enough to buy a TV. It’s small, but it fits perfectly in their apartment, where the only big things are Oikawa-san and the sofa.
To celebrate, they invite Sugawara-san, even though he probably would have shown up anyway, seeing as he tends to visit almost every weekend.
Kiyoko and Sugawara-san sit on the couch, too close to each other even when there’s enough space for four people, while Oikawa-san, instead of sitting next to one them, settles on the floor, his back pressed against Kiyoko’s legs, and one arm raised and resting on Sugawara-san’s knees.
Since they never agreed on what to watch, they ended up on a music channel, watching video clips of songs too old for Kiyoko to really remember. Oikawa-san hums along to every single one of them, and Sugawara-san makes up plots for the weirdest videos. Sometimes, Sugawara-san leans to Kiyoko’s side to whisper something to her, his breath tickling her ear, and other times he lets his hand rest on the arm Oikawa-san has on his lap, and then Oikawa-san rests his head on Sugawara-san’s knee, while at the same time he brings his other hand to rest on Kiyoko’s ankle.
Kiyoko doesn’t want the night to end, she wishes she could stay the whole weekend in that sofa, safe and warm, so comfortable that it’s hard for her to believe that they haven’t spent their whole lives like this. She doesn’t think she could ever choose between either of them, and so she decides not to, resolves to keep her feelings to herself, and let whatever it is that seems to be happening between Oikawa-san and Sugawara-san take its course.
There's a third beginning on a Thursday night of the sixth month.
Sugawara-san’s Friday classes are cancelled, so he takes the train to Tokyo and gets to their apartment late, just as Kiyoko’s getting into bed.
She takes out the blankets for him while Oikawa-san gives him something to eat, and then both boys wish her a good night.
As used as she is to waking up around 1 am to the sound of Oikawa-san getting into bed, tonight she’s woken up by silence. She strains her ears and hears them murmuring in the living room, and curiosity gets the best of her, so she gets out of bed as quietly as possible and pads through the short hallway to peek into the living room.
She catches Oikawa-san leaning forward, his lips pressed to Sugawara-san’s. Both of them have their eyes open, Sugawara-san in surprise and Oikawa-san in what seems to be a dare, but then Sugawara-san relaxes into the kiss and closes his eyes, puts one hand on Oikawa-san’s shoulder and parts his lips.
Kiyoko’s eyes widen and she takes a step back, not wanting to risk being seen, and then, as slowly and quietly as possible, she returns to her room. She sits on the floor, by her bed, and doesn’t dare to move, just spends what feels like an eternity reminding herself that she’d thought something might happen someday, that she’d said she’d step back, that she wants them to be happy and that it’s better this way, because she doesn’t have to choose.
She can hear them talking, and she makes an effort not to listen to what they say, gives them the privacy they deserve, but she still hears Oikawa-san say that he’ll talk to her in the morning.
Even if Sugawara-san doesn’t have classes, Kiyoko’s and Oikawa-san’s Friday remains the same, so Oikawa-san’s alarm rings at 6am, and she gets up at her usual time.
Sugawara-san’s sleeping in the living room, lying on his back, softly snoring, and Kiyoko chuckles before remembering the previous night.
Just like every weekday, Oikawa-san arrives just as Kiyoko’s getting out of the bathroom, but instead of just wishing her a good morning and heading to his room to get clean clothes, today he stays in his spot like he’s forgotten how to move, just looking at her. She walks past him, heads to the kitchen for breakfast, and he takes a deep breath and blurts, “I like you, Kiyoko-chan.”
She doesn’t turn around, doesn’t dare to look at him, but she does check that Sugawara-san’s still sleeping. He’s unmoving, but now he’s lying on his side, so he isn’t snoring anymore.
“I thought you liked Sugawara-san,” she says, getting her cup.
“…why?”
She turns her head to see his expression as she says, “You were kissing him last night.”
Oikawa-san’s eyes widen, and he covers his face with one hand.
“Crap. You weren’t supposed to see that. I’m so sorry, Kiyoko-chan. I’m-”
“Who do you like?” she asks, her voice too small even to her own ears.
Oikawa-san uncovers his face and looks at her. She feels tiny, so she tries to stand straight.
“Both of you,” he says. He sounds serious and solemn, like it’s the most important thing he has ever said. “I like Suga-chan and I like you.” He doesn’t let that sink in, he just keeps talking. “And it’s true! I’m not playing, or lying. And he likes you too. He likes both of us as well. He was supposed to tell you himself, but I don’t want you thinking I’m stealing him or something, or that I was lying when I tried to set you up with him. We both like you. And we like each other. And this explanation is a disaster, I was supposed to tell you I liked you in the afternoon, not now, but it came out and…”
“Oikawa, you suck at this,” Sugawara-san says from the living room, startling Kiyoko. Oikawa-san looks simultaneously guilty and relieved.
They look into the living room, where Sugawara-san’s looking faintly amused, and too awake for Kiyoko’s comfort. He probably heard everything.
Sugawara-san sits on the couch and moves to one side, then pats the space next to him.
Oikawa-san’s the first to react, and he sits at the other end of the couch, and then both boys look at her.
“The summary of what Oikawa was saying is that we like you, and we like each other. And that it isn’t a lie, and what we feel for you is equally strong to what we feel for each other.”
“And it’s fine if you only like Suga-chan,” Oikawa-san says. “You don’t have to like me too. I wished you would, though, but you don’t have to,” he pauses, looking sad for a moment before continuing. “I’ll move out if you’re uncomfortable.”
They both look at her and wait. She’s oddly proud of them for not looking demanding, for not fidgeting, even as she stays quiet and the seconds stretch into a whole minute as she thinks everything over.
They like her. Both of them.
Kiyoko studies their faces, even though she knows every single detail. Oikawa-san looks awful, there are bags under his eyes, his face is flushed and covered in sweat, and his t-shirt is sticking to his body. Sugawara-san also looks terrible, with his hair mussed from sleep and his pajamas wrinkled.
Neither has ever looked more beautiful to her.
She extends a hand towards Sugawara-san, who takes it in his own and holds it softly, but he looks at her with concern. Kiyoko smiles at him, and then she turns towards Oikawa-san, who’s watching them with badly hidden envy and hurt.
“I like you too, Oikawa-san,” she says, and kneels on the couch to kiss him, just a quick press of lips. “Or is it Tooru-kun?” she asks, tone slightly teasing.
He looks confused for a moment, and then he grins. When she looks at Sugawara-san, he’s grinning as well, so she kisses him too, because she’s wanted to do so for too long.
Sugawara-san cups her face in his hands and kisses her tenderly, while Oikawa-san wraps his arms around her waist and kisses her arm, her shoulder, her back, any spot he can reach, and when she breaks the kiss, Oikawa-san pulls her back and makes her sit on his lap just to get the chance to kiss Sugawara-san as well.
“We’re going to be late, Oikawa-san,” Kiyoko says, and almost laughs when the others look at her with dismay.
“Kiyoko-chan, we’re having a moment!”
“You still need to take a shower,” Sugawara-san says, smirking, and then he kisses Oikawa-san again.
“But she’s calling me ‘Oikawa-san’ again. What happened to Tooru-kun?”
“If you’re ‘Tooru-kun’, I want to be ‘Koushi-kun’,” Sugawara-san says, giving Kiyoko a playful look.
She looks down at her hands.
“Maybe later,” she says, standing up and going back to the kitchen.
Oikawa-san stands up as well and gets into the bathroom.
As she pours herself some coffee, Kiyoko can feel Sugawara-san’s eyes on her. She looks up and finds him watching her, looking awed and happy. She blushes and looks down to her cup, and they remain quiet until Oikawa-san leaves the bathroom covered only with a towel wrapped around his waist, which makes Kiyoko cover her face and Sugawara-san throw a pillow at him.
She has no idea what they’re going to do afterwards, if they’ll have to set up a schedule, or if they’ll have to buy a bigger bed, or if it’ll all go to hell in a week, but right now, everything makes sense.
It’s the best beginning she could ask for.