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“This is such a bad idea…” Akaashi muttered, knowing he would be ignored by his captain.
It all started after practice finished. He wasn’t sure who suggested it, but he had his money on the hyperactive #7 of Nekoma. It wasn’t long until Hinata and Lev were backing him up and trying to get more players to join in.
“Let’s play a game with the teams and positions mixed up.” He had said, with a large smile.
Bokuto was easy to convince, as usual. Karasuno’s captain just told them not to harass people into playing and to avoid injuries. Kuroo smiled, and after asking his first years that were ganging on him to give him a bit of space, also agreed. “It might be interesting.” He explained to Akaashi, who was pleading him with his eyes to refuse. As both Shinzen and Ubugawa were already gone, those three captains’ support was all they needed.
“Okay, we have three teams which we have to mix up. How do we do it?” Everyone turned to Kai and realised that they needed to find an actual way to organise the games. The first year libero from Nekoma, Shiba-something, Akaashi didn’t knew that many of the first-years names, suggested to cut papers and numbering them to create 3 teams.
“We also need new positions!” added Komi. Akaashi sighted, even his teammates were hyped up about the games.
There was a moment in which everyone was trying to find a way to randomly allocate the players, until Akaashi decided that if they were going to do it, at least they were going to do it correctly. “We need to write on the papers both a team and a position, each team will need a libero, a setter and both middle blockers and wing spikers. If someone gets the same position they actually have, they can change it with someone in their team who has the same problem or whose position would not be the real one with the change.”
Everyone agreed that it was the best idea, and the first years started to create the papers. Konoha suggested that they should name the teams, which lead to a long discussion where each option was worse than the others. At the end they ended up with three names Akaashi had no idea why they won. The first one was the Doggy Club, probably mocking Nekoma and their cat obsession. Then there was ‘not-good-enough-for-the-top-three’ which was an intentional jab to his captain. Bokuto was offended, but recovered quickly when he realised that there was a high probability that Kuroo would ended up on the Doggy Club.
Last but not least, there was ‘Our setter is the prettiest!’. Akaashi was completely confused until Sarukui explained him about the war that started when someone mentioned their setter being the most good-looking. It ended up in an all-out fight (in which Karasuno overlooked that Suga was not their official setter anymore) which ended with Kuroo showing everyone pictures of young Kenma playing videogames.
Sarukui managed to skip the fact that Bokuto had showed everyone every single picture he had of Akaashi saved on his phone, while saying “Look! He is so cute, how can you say he is not the prettiest?”. It wasn’t something Akaashi needed to know. At least not when he was in public.
Everyone picked one of the papers, and Akaashi wasn’t sure if being the libero for ‘Our setter is the prettiest!’ was a good thing or not. When he learnt that Karasuno’s Tanaka was going to be the setter, he felt that the world was trying to make a statement. It wasn’t that the guy was bad looking, but he was so intimidating that first years would probably run away from him and think he was a thug.
Akaashi’s team also included Nekoma’s libero Yaku and Konoha as a middle blockers. Karasuno’s Hinata and Nishinoya, and Nekoma’s Inuoka were the wing spikers. Akaashi quickly noted the huge height disadvantage they had. Not only they had two of the shortest liberos, they also had Hinata who was clearly missing some centimetres.
“Okay team, we need to choose a captain as we don’t have any of the actual captains on our team.” Akaashi told them, when they were all together.
“Wouldn’t it be you? You are Fukurodani’s vice captain, no?” Yaku asked him.
“I am a libero now, so it can’t be me. You and Konoha are third years, so maybe it should be one of you.”
“Yaku! Yaku is not a libero anymore, so let’s make Yaku our captain!” Started chirping Inuoka. The rest of the team quickly agreed, as they knew that he was one of the primary babysitters of Nekoma, and that team was mostly composed of overgrown man-childs.
When all the teams got together to choose who would play first, they finally got to know the line-up of the other teams. Yaku was standing in the middle, waiting for the other captains to come forward. The captain of the Doggy Club, to everyone’s surprise, was Komi. It was unusual as the Doggy Club had both Kuroo and Daichi in their team, and the other teams just assumed that it was going to be one of them.
“Wait, we didn’t knew that there was a rule that a libero had to be the captain!” Exclaimed Bokuto. He then turned to the rest of ‘not-good-enough-for-the-top-three’ and a few moments later Shibayama came forward as the new captain. He was root red, as he was the only first year and he wasn’t sure if he would be a good leader for his team.
“Let’s decide which team will be the first to seat out with a game of rock, paper, scissors.” Suggested Suga, who was now a wing spiker for ‘not-good-enough-for-the-top-three’. They all agreed that it would be a great idea, and the captains started to play. Shibayama was relieved when he didn’t let down his team, his captain duties completed perfectly.
Yaku managed to win against Komi. It was confusing as Akaashi momentarily forgot that they were on the same team, rather than rivals. It was ‘not-good-enough-for-the-top-three’ vs ‘Our setter is the prettiest!’: the match of the year.
Our setter is the prettiest! line-up:
-Setter: Tanaka
-Libero: Akaashi
-Middle Blockers: Yaku ©, Konoha
-Wing Spikers: Noya, Hinata, Inuoka
Not-good-enough-for-the-top-three line-up:
-Setter: Lev
-Libero: Yamamoto
-Middle Blockers: Bokuto, Sarukui
-Wing Spikers: Suga, Shibayama ©, Tsukishima
“Wish me good luck!” Bokuto asked Akaashi.
“We are not in the same team anymore.”
“You can still wish me good luck.”
There was a brief second in which Akaashi wondered if Bokuto understood the concept of not being on the same team. “Okay, I wish you good luck Bokuto-san.”
“Thank you, such a nice person!”
“Because you will need it. I am not planning on losing.”
Bokuto was going to say something, but Akaashi left to join his team before he could talk. Before he started to sulk, Sarukui patted him on the back and muttered “Pull yourself together man.”
The match started, with Kai as the referee and Doggy Club as the spectators. Akaashi was right in the fact that their height deficiency would end up being problematic. They had two liberos who were now expected to spike and block, when that was completely forbidden before. Furthermore, as Hinata and Inuoka were middle blockers, they didn’t knew what to do when they were on the vanguard all the time. Akaashi wasn’t that bad as a libero, but as a setter receives were not his speciality.
Tanaka was surviving. He was not born to be a setter, but he managed to get the ball to where it was needed. Lev was a complete different story. ‘not-good-enough-for-the-top-three’ had a really good defence. Yamamoto, being from Nekoma, was pretty good with receives and would make a decent libero. The rest of the team ranged from good to excellent with their receives, improving the defence of the team. And then, there was Lev. He wasn’t the best middle blocker out there, but he was now officially the worst setter ever.
Doggy Club couldn’t stop laughing. The very few balls each team managed to pass to the other side were usually safely received on the other side. At the end most points were gained thanks to mistakes of the other team, rather than actual skill.
The most glorious point ended up being what would be remembered as the three libero play. Akaashi managed to receive one of Sarukui’s serves, but it wasn’t a completely clean receive. Noya saved it and set it to Yaku, who jumped as high as possible and spiked. The other team was not able to catch the ball, which sent Doggy Club into madness. The three libero play was a success.
‘not-good-enough-for-the-top-three’ had a hard time with Lev as their setter. At the end they all just decided to try to get other people to set. When Kai noticed, he made it a rule that Suga was not allowed to have the second touch, as he was a setter and he was not allowed to have his original position. The rest were fair game.
It was a tough game. The scores were almost identical and Akaashi could swear that they had marked more points thanks to serves than in any other game combined. At the end ‘Our setter is the prettiest!’ won, which left both Shibayama and Bokuto almost in tears.
Shibayama was utterly devastated as he thought that he had let his team down as a captain. His first time as a captain and he had been a failure. His teammates tried to convince him that it was okay, it wasn’t his fault. It was Lev’s.
Bokuto was also sulking because he was planning on telling Akaashi that it was proof that he needed him. Bokuto had a different setter during his first year, but for Akaashi he had always been his ace. Now he was sad, Akaashi didn’t need him. He would probably forget about him when he left after third year, and would undoubtedly become best friends with Onaga.
Bokuto was almost weeping, he didn’t wanted to be replaced by Onaga! Sarukui sent a distressed look to both Konoha and Akaashi, but they weren’t on the same team for once, so it was Sarukui’s responsibility.
“Hey cap, what’s wrong?”
“How is Onaga better than me?”
Sarukui was confused, what had happened with Onaga to send their captain into that state? Especially when they hadn’t been playing with him and the only thing Onaga had done was attempting to talk with the first years of his new team.
“I guess he is taller? I don’t know man, he has better grades than you? Why do you think he is better than you?”
“Because Akaashi is going to leave me for him!”
Sarukui was even more confused. But he was also glad that the issue was kind of logic. Their last captain had been a bit weird, and one day decided that they would call each other by codenames in order to stop the government from stealing their strategies. Now the guy was on one of the country’s best universities, but he still completely refused to use their real names. Bokuto was a bit special, but that guy had been completely nuts.
“Akaashi! This is your problem, I’m out.” He saw how the younger boy sighted and resigned to his role as a babysitter. They had a five minutes break before the match against Doggy Club and Akaashi was originally planning on taking a rest and making a strategy with his team. It seemed like there was going to be a change of plans as he had to talk his captain out of his newest idea.
“What happened?” he asked Sarukui, maybe it had an easy solution.
“He thinks you are going to elope with Onaga.”
“Why Onaga?”
“Not sure, he is taller?”
“Why would I elope with Onaga just because he is taller?”
“No idea, you ask him.”
Akaashi approached his captain, unsure about what to do. He usually left his teammates and the managers to deal with Bokuto, and eloping with Onaga was definitely an issue he was not sure how to approach.
“Bokuto-san, I am not eloping with Onaga because he is taller than you.”
“What?”
“Sarukui-san told me you were sad because I was eloping with Onaga due to his height.”
“Why would he say that? I told him that it was sad that you don’t need me and you would probably become best friends with Onaga and forget about me.” Bokuto realised that when he said it aloud it did sound a bit farfetched, but at least it wasn’t as bad as the Onaga elope theory with a side of height angst.
Akaashi was confused and had no idea of what to say, he didn’t expected Bokuto to be thinking about their inevitable separation. Not in the middle of a match, of all times.
“Don’t worry, I will not forget you.” Was that the correct thing to say? Was there a correct thing to say in this occasions?
“You don’t get it! You will forget about me, you don’t need me. You probably think of me as an annoying senpai.”
“No I don’t…”
“You hate me!”
“I don’t.”
“You will try to murder me on my sleep!”
“I- what? No, I won’t. Why would I try to kill you?”
“Because you hate me?”
“Why would I hate you?”
“I don’t know, because I’m not as tall as Onaga?”
Akaashi was not sure if that was meant as a joke, or if he really did have height issues because of Onaga. Bokuto was really confusing sometimes.
“Your height is good as it is, as I am used to setting for you like that. I do not hate you, I actually like you.” If he didn’t he would already have committed murder and blamed it on Konoha.
“Really?”
“Yes, you are a nice person and a good captain.”
“Thanks! I also really like you, you are the best!”
Akaashi nodded, he knew Bokuto was fond of him. It was a shame that it was only that, the captain liking him as a kohai.
“Yes, everything is fine now. I like you, you like me and everyone in the team gets along. No one will elope with no one.”
“Wait, you wouldn’t elope with me?”
Bokuto was looking him with hopeful eyes, like he was actually planning on eloping together.
“Why would we do that?”
“So we can be together forever!”
“But why would you want to be with me forever? You would get bored.”
Bokuto looked confused, as if the idea of being together for eternity was such a good concept that someone not seeing it like that was odd.
“But I like you and want to spend all my time with you.”
If that was one of dramas his older sister watched, Akaashi would have said that it was a confession. But that was Bokuto, with his unnecessary PDA and constant compliments. Millions of memories of comments like that flashed by Akaashi’s mind. It couldn’t be, could it?
Then, he started to hear a quiet tune. When he turned around he saw that it was Konoha and Sarukui, who were humming ‘Kiss the Girl’. Bokuto turned root red and that was enough for Akaashi. He took him by the hand, and they left the gym.
When they returned, both their lips having been used for more than just talking about Onaga’s superior height, Akaashi realised that the match between Doggy Club and ‘our setter is the prettiest!’ had already started.
Sarukui had replaced him as the libero for ‘our setter is the prettiest!’ but that didn’t stop the third years from Fukurodani to hoot at them and Akaashi was sure someone shouted “finally!” at them.
“You know” Bokuto told him after Doggy Club had won and everyone decided to go get dinner, “our setter is definitely the prettiest.”