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It starts in the library.
“Hey, Yachi-san,” Kuroo asks, peering over her shoulder. “Whatcha working on?”
Yachi hums, tongue caught between her teeth. “Notes,” she replies. Her pen doesn’t pause its movement across the page, inked tip leaving scribbles of blue in its wake.
“Oh?” Hinata leans over from where he’s been doodling on Kageyama’s textbook, Kageyama’s exasperated fist still buried knuckle-deep in his hair.
“I didn’t know you had readings for Design,” he marvels. “Isn’t that the whole point of it?”
Kageyama’s fist tightens in his hair, and Hinata lets out a yelp. “Idiot,” Kageyama mutters. “There are other reasons to take Design.”
“Name one,” Hinata shoots back as he clutches at Kageyama’s own hair, Yachi forgotten. Tsukishima grumbles as the two jostle him with their tussling, his pen leaving a thick black mark as Hinata’s elbow digs into him.
“Children!” Yamaguchi announces, striding up to their table. “Quiet in the library.” He takes the back of their chairs and pushes. The two roll away from the table, wheels squeaking, voices growing distant, fighting without a care in the world.
“Oh, to be young.” He pushes his green hair out of his face and leans over Tsukishima’s shoulder.
“Oh,” he says, mourning the ugly black stroke Tsukishima’s pen had left across the page. Tsukishima grumbles again, glasses twitching on his face, and Yamaguchi lays a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.
“Oh,” he says again, grimacing as he catches sight of Yachi’s homework. “Yacchan, that looks awful.”
Yachi laughs, leaning back in her chair. “My Women and Gender Studies course,” she explains. “It’s actually going really well this term.”
Kuroo nods distractedly, eyes scanning over her reading. “The Gendered Wage Gap,” he reads aloud, “A Neoliberal Feminist Approach To Contemporary Issues.”
“Exactly,” Yachi nods seriously.
Kuroo nods back, flummoxed. “Exactly,” he echoes.
Yachi smiles, leaning forward. “Kuroo, what’s neoliberalism?”
“Uh,” he answers intelligently.
Yamaguchi giggles. Yachi looks at him. “Tadashi, what’s neoliberalism?” Yamaguchi stops giggling.
“You’re in Economics, Kuroo,” Tsukishima says, pressing his fingers against his temples. “You should know what neoliberalism is.”
“I’m in Business!” Kuroo splutters. “I know what the wage gap is!”
“The gendered wage gap?” Yachi asks innocently, eyes blinking wide. Kuroo splutters again, hands waving pointlessly in the air.
“Business major,” Tsukishima mutters under his breath. “Clearly.”
Kuroo splutters a third time. “Kids these days,” he complains. “Where’s Bokuto when you need him?”
By now, Hinata and Kageyama have rolled their chairs back to the table, wheels squeaking all the while. “Are we making fun of Kuroo-san?” Hinata asks brightly, hair thoroughly mussed. “What is it this time?”
“Local Marketing student knows nothing about markets,” Tsukishima informs him.
“Business—” Kuroo starts, but Hinata cuts him off, laughing. “That’s funny,” he says, sneaking a glance at Kageyama. “That’s like a Kin' student mislabelling anatomy.”
“You didn’t know what a humerus was last week,” Kageyama reminds him.
Hinata smiles. “That’s funny,” he says. “Get it? Humorous?” Kageyama’s hand shoots roughly back into Hinata’s hair.
“Hinata,” Yamaguchi asks. “What’s neoliberalism?”
Hinata’s smile droops. “I study muscles,” he complains.
Kageyama scoffs behind him. “Study,” he mocks. “Quick, what’s kinesiology, actually?”
Hinata squirms in Kageyama’s grip. “Like, muscles. And bones and stuff.”
Tsukishima stares incredulously. “That’s your major.”
“That’s my major,” Kageyama grumbles, in the voice of a student doomed to carry his group projects until the end of time. “It’s more like his pastime.” Said-groupmate blinks owlishly, blissfully unaware of his partner’s curse.
“Actually, why are you doing gender homework?” Yamaguchi asks, glancing at Yachi’s reading again. “Aren’t you a Design student?”
“Gender homework,” Yachi whispers to herself. She sits up and straightens the papers in front of her. “It’s just an elective. I’m not doing too bad, actually.”
“An elective?” Kageyama leans over, peering at the course code at the top of the page. “Wugs,” he says confidently.
“Wugs,” Yachi repeats unbelievingly. The consequences of befriending student athletes. “W-G-S,” she spells. “Women and Gender Studies.”
“What do you study in that?” Hinata asks, head appearing cartoonishly beside Kageyama’s.
Tsukishima gives him a flat look. “Take a fucking guess.”
Hinata ignores him. “What’s Women and Gender Studies?” He turns to Kuroo. “Kuroo-san, what’s Women and Gender Studies?”
“I—” Kuroo flounders for a few moments. “The gendered wage gap,” he announces.
“And what’s that, Kuroo-san?” Yamaguchi chimes in.
“The—y’know,” Kuroo mutters, scratching the back of his head. “The wage gap. But like, gendered.”
Yamaguchi grins. “You don’t know what wugs is.”
Tsukishima groans. “You don’t know what wugs is.”
“Tadashi, dear,” Yachi asks sweetly, “What is wugs?”
Yamaguchi puts both hands on her shoulders. “Yacchan,” he says, voice confident. “I love women, I love gender, and most of all, I love you, very much. But I study computers. I have no fucking clue.”
Yachi turns to Hinata and Kageyama, whose twin heads tilt in identical confusion, and then thinks better of it. “Does no one know what Women and Gender Studies is?”
“I know—” Tsukishima huffs into empty space. They all collectively ignore him.
Bokuto chooses this moment to saunter over, striped hair matted with sweat from the gym, mouth opened in a greeting. They all turn to him.
“Bokuto-san,” Hinata demands, “what’s Women and Gender Studies.” Bokuto stares. Six pairs of eyes stare back.
Silence.
“I have two moms,” Bokuto blurts out defensively.
—
They all decide to attend Yachi’s next Women and Gender Studies lecture, if not to say that they know what it is.
The Women and Gender Studies department, like all Humanities departments really, is inevitably not the most well-funded place in the world. Yachi’s lecture today is held in a gray building behind the campus park, a decrepit old thing, one that Hinata and Kageyama walked past five times squabbling over directions before they realized that that was the right building, and one that Bokuto walked past another five times because he was late from training and had arrived on his own, dazed and confused.
Kuroo hits his head on the doorframe on the way in, glaring at the cracked wooden beam as if it wasn’t his department stealing all the funding in the first place. History major Tsukishima, no doubt used to his own crumbling faculty buildings, ducks. Kageyama doesn’t notice, still arguing with Hinata (“Yachi-san said left, how was I supposed to—”), and hits his head too, directing his scowl to the doorframe instead. Hinata passes smoothly beneath the wooden beam, smiling obliviously. Once inside, they all stop and blink. The light fixture above them flickers, casting a dim, shaky glow across the first floor. The door closes behind them, and they are engulfed in darkness.
“Is that—” Kuroo starts and stops, pointing at the wall. “Is that mold?”
Kageyama follows his finger, nose wrinkling in distaste. “Yes. It’s mold.”
Hinata squints in the gloom. “How can you guys even see, it’s so—” He yelps as he trips down the stairs to the basement lecture hall, saved only by Yamaguchi’s quick grip on his collar.
“What?” Tsukishima snorts. “Have none of you have ever set foot in a Humanities building before?”
“No,” Bokuto says, horrified. “They’re all like this? How can Yacchan stand it?” Tsukishima’s quiet ‘what about me’ is collectively ignored.
“Yachi-san spends most of her time in the design lab,” Kageyama points out.
“You live like this,” Yamaguchi marvels, turning to Tsukishima in the dark. “No wonder you hiss when I turn on the lights.”
Tsukishima cuffs him around the ear and strides ahead down the stairs, the rest stumbling after him. In the basement hall, Yachi is waiting for them in the front row, fringe pinned neatly back with a pale blue clip.
“You guys came!” She waves them over, grinning cheerily.
“Of course we came,” Yamaguchi beams, ruffling her hair as he sits down next to her. Kuroo sits down next to him, Bokuto next to Kuroo, then Tsukishima, Hinata, Kageyama, and Miya Osamu, who arrived last minute and joined them on the other end, easy smile gracing his face. He’s just here for shits and giggles, really.
He had given Yachi a fistbump as he stooped under the doorframe. She returned it easily.
“Miya?” Kageyama asked disbelievingly, as Osamu settled in beside him.
“Hey, Tobio,” Osamu replied, patting his arm. Hinata twisted around, leaning over Kageyama’s lap.
“Miya-san! What are you doing here?”
Osamu had shrugged, pulling out a notebook. “I go here.”
"How's Atsumu-san?"
"'Tsumu's good, if good means chasing your guys' poor new outside hitter all around campus."
"Sakusa-san?"
"The very one."
Bokuto, bending over Tsukishima. “Osamu! You study women?”
Osamu leaned forward. “I love women,” he said, seriously.
At two in the afternoon, on the far side of the campus park, criminally underpaid Women and Gender Studies professor Takeda Ittetsu-sensei walks into his Wednesday lecture and sees the entire front row of his lecture hall taken up by seven huge men, and one tiny blonde girl.
They are too big to fit into the seats. Their shoulders bump each other’s relentlessly, to Yamaguchi’s chagrin, Osamu’s amusement, and Tsukishima’s unending rage.
“Bokkun,” Kuroo says primly, “Please, you are halfway in my lap.”
“Kuroo,” Bokuto hisses back, “It’s these chairs. I’m halfway in Tsukishima’s lap.”
Tsukishima groans. “Don’t I fucking know it.” His head hits the back of his chair with a thud.
For the first five minutes, they squabble and squirm and shove each other in their seats before Professor Takeda, as bewildered as he is, takes note of the time and starts the lecture. They silence like schoolchildren.
Quickly, they realize that no one understands what’s going on. Well, Tsukishima does, but he’s too busy grumbling about Kageyama’s elbow in his rib to listen. The only people taking in Takeda-sensei’s lecture are Yachi, scribbling obediently in her notebook on one end of the simply enormous front row, and Osamu on the other end, who’s really just here to watch the world crash and burn.
Bokuto has pulled his own notebook out, splayed over the pull-out table attached to his seat. He is scribbling like mad. Kuroo peers over, astounded, and pokes him in the ribs.
“Hey, you actually understand this?”
Eyes glued to his notebook, Bokuto resolutely shakes his head.
“Dude. What are you writing, then?”
Bokuto looks over, panic in his eyes. “I don’t know.”
Bokuto is trying his best, Tsukishima is furious that Bokuto on his right and Kageyama on his left are jostling him back and forth like a rollercoaster, the former writing up a frenzy and the latter elbowing Hinata absentmindedly for right to the armrest between them. Hinata’s eyes are wide open in confusion. Kageyama has a deep-set frown in his face.
“Bokuto-san,” Tsukishima says through gritted teeth, quiet enough to keep from disturbing the lecture but loud enough for Bokuto to hear the clench in his jaw. “Please, your arm is taking up half my backrest.”
“Can’t. Talk.” Bokuto mumbles, pencil a blur in his hand. “Paying. Attention.”
Tsukishima looks bemusedly over Bokuto’s massive shoulder. “Bokuto-san,” he says tiredly, “That’s not—” Suddenly he twists around and hisses, “Hinata.”
Hinata has all but been launched into Tsukishima’s seat—Kageyama, finally fed up of Hinata’s fidgeting, had given him a hard shove, right into Tsukishima.
“Kageyama!” Hinata cries, affronted. The entire first row shushes him loudly. Kageyama grumbles a reluctant apology. Long used to their antics, Yachi smiles on, taking diligent notes in her neat, looping script.
The clock hits three, and Takeda-sensei announces a ten-minute break. All seven of the front row beat out the other students, the Women and Gender Studies majors, to line up on stage before the poor, poor professor. Kuroo stutters through the phrase ‘gendered wage gap’.
Takeda Ittetsu-sensei is criminally, criminally underpaid.
The lecture starts up again at ten past three. They make their way back to their chairs, squeezing in like sardines. Somewhere, some rotted piece of wood cracks. No one dares to look.
At one point in the lecture, Bokuto tries to raise his hand. Kuroo immediately grabs and lowers it. Bokuto turns.
“Yacchan,” he hisses. “Is it appropriate to mention my moms?”
Osamu’s snicker is heard all the way down the row of seats. Tsukishima audibly groans, and smacks his forehead into the table in front of him. It breaks cleanly in half, a sickening snap echoing around the hall. Tsukishima freezes, body bent over the desk like a shrimp.
Hinata guffaws. “Look who’s shrimpy now! Lobstershima!” Tsukishima is inconsolable.
"Are they yours?" Someone behind them asks Yachi, quietly.
"They're mine!" She responds, turning around with a smile.
"We're hers," they say in unison.
Everyone in the hall is flabbergasted as to where on earth Yachi got them. Yamaguchi giggles. Everyone in the hall falls in love.
After the lecture, the seven of them beat out the other students again, lining up this time to thank the professor for the lecture. Kuroo tries to apologize for their behavior, but really, he was the biggest instigator of all of them. Yamaguchi tries to apologize, but he can’t stop giggling himself. Tsukishima is too much at his wit’s end to apologize. Osamu is the only one who truly apologizes with a sheepish grin, and ushers them collectively out before long. Takeda-sensei hesitantly returns Yachi’s smile as she leaves with them, and turns back to the rest of his students as if to say, I have no answers either.
They squint as they leave the building, afternoon sunlight malignant after so long in the poorly-lit lecture hall. “Yacchan,” Bokuto mumbles, “Can I borrow your notes?”
The Men’s Varsity volleyball team attends every lecture henceforth.
—
“What’s post-feminism?” Yamaguchi asks Hinata as they line up in the dining hall, trays at the ready.
“Explain Title IX,” Hinata replies, sneaking more rice onto his plate, “and name me a relevant case study.”
“Differentiate first, second, and third-wave feminism,” Osamu calls out between Tsukishima’s reps on the pull-up bar. ("Why is our team nutritionist interrupting group lift," Tsukishima grouses, but responds anyway.)
Forehead slick with sweat, gymnasium lights shining above him, Kageyama sets a volleyball high. “Define misogynoir!” He yells out.
“And who coined the term?” Bokuto shoots back, slamming the ball into the ground on the other side of the net.
“Kuroo-san,” they chorus, at their usual table in the library, “What’s the gendered wage gap?”
They quiz each other over lunch, on the court, making their way to class, during Osamu’s monthly health presentation. Bokuto, who trains later than the rest of them, shows up right after his gym session in absurdly tight volleyball shorts. A few weeks in, ‘Takeda-sensei’ becomes ‘Take-chan’. A few weeks after that, the Men’s Varsity volleyball team earns a new supporter at every single one of their Friday games without fail, a small professor in glasses in the front row of the bleachers. Delighted, they swaddle him with varsity swag merchandise. They beam when he shows up to the usual Wednesday lecture in a sweatshirt reading ‘VOLLEYBALL’ in white.
One day, Yachi is sick. The first seat is empty. The rest of them show up anyway, and keep the chair open in her honor.
“I’ll take notes for her,” Bokuto announces, pencil at the ready.
“Bokuto-san, what does this say,” Yachi exclaims later, after a group visit to her dorm.
For the rest of term, no one dares miss a lecture. Bokuto is swiftly relieved of his note-taking duties. Before course enrolment closes, all seven of them enroll in WGS101: Intro to Women and Gender Studies, and declare themselves official Women and Gender Studies students. Yachi shakes her head fondly, and tells them that one course doesn’t make them a WGS student. They shush her. They are wugs students, and proud of it too.
Every Wednesday, a horde of six-foot-tall men and a single, smaller, orange one, is observed emerging from the athletic center and sprinting across campus at full speed, hurtling towards an old building behind the park, where an even smaller blonde-haired student is waiting for them. Students catch wind of them yelling about late cards, gender, and something about a Yacchan? A Take-chan? They shake their heads. Student athletes these days. Must be business majors.
They all ace the class, of course. They celebrate at their college bar.
“To women!” Bokuto announces, drink raised high and triumphant.
“To gender,” Yamaguchi slurs agreeably, knocking his cup against Bokuto’s with a light clink.
Yachi beams delightedly, a pleasant flush spread over her cheeks. “I’m so proud of you guys,” she declares, throwing her arms over Tsukishima and Kageyama’s shoulders. Tsukishima is pleased enough that he doesn’t comment on the drink that sloshes into his lap as Kuroo sets a new line of ominously-colored shots before them.
“Kuroo,” Yachi starts teasingly, “What’s the g—”
Without missing a beat, Kuroo throws his shot back, coughing with the force of it. He raises a hand to block Yachi’s face from his view, other hand covering an ear determinedly. Hinata’s laughter rings bright and clear through the air. Yamaguchi lets out a giggle of his own and presses a friendly kiss to Yachi’s cheek. Fingers absentmindedly carding through Tsukishima’s hair, she looks around at her friends, and smiles.
—
(They invited Akaashi, on the first day, and every class since. He said he loved himself enough to know not to attend a lecture with them.)