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“I’m sorry, Sho-chan,” Kenma murmurs in the darkness of their room. “I can’t stay here.”
The wind outside howls against the moon, and their mother is rummaging around the kitchen, packing things in boxes as she talks to herself in angry tones. Shouyou finds himself curling his fingers around his older brothers’ shirt, keeping a tight, almost possessive, grasp.
“But why?” Shouyou asks quietly, persistently, sourly. “Why are you leaving me?”
“Miyagi is where you belong,” Kenma replied. “I don’t belong here. It’s too quiet.”
Shouyou pinched his eyebrows together in confusion. “…Kenma-san…you love the quiet.”
“It’s different,” Kenma said. “I like the quiet, true, but…Miyagi is too stifling for me to breathe.”
Shouyou understood. He did. That didn’t mean he wanted to, of course. He stared at his ceiling, at the glow-in-the-dark stickers he and Kenma put on when they were little kids, when they didn’t have to worry about which parent would leave the house first in a blinding fury resembling a hurricane. Their mother was the first to snap.
“Okay,” he found himself whispering, even as tears burned in his eyes. “So long as it makes you happy, oniisan.”
Kenma’s fingers curl around his own as they hear the yelling resonate from the kitchen, hear the harsh grating of their fathers’ voice and the shrill pitch of their mothers’ response. Shouyou wishes they’d get along at least once but, as he hears glass shatter, he understands that these things don’t always end in mutual agreement.
“You can come with me,” Kenma says, once the yelling has burned out and their father has stormed out to the backyard for a smoke and some sake. “Mom wants you to.”
“Dad needs someone to look after him,” Shouyou refutes, ignoring the clenching of his heart and the persistent say yes, say yes, say yes, in the back of his mind. He doesn’t want to leave the Miyagi Prefecture because Karasuno was here, with the Small Giant and flying crows waiting for his arrival. By the time his first year rolled around, he was going to become a hurricane with Karasuno in mind. He doesn’t want to leave Izumi-chan, Kai-chan, and Yuki-chan, and everyone else. He doesn’t want to pack his things to desert the only place he’s ever called home. He’d miss the way the mountain air fills his lungs and the smell of freshly cut grass and the idle traffic of the bicycle trails. He doesn’t want to change that for a bustling city where life never stopped for a moment.
“He does,” Kenma agrees before turning on his side and blinking catlike at him. His oniisan always reminded Shouyou of a nimble feline. “Just…if he becomes unbearable and too much for you to handle, Sho-chan, you will come to me.”
There was no compromise, no ifs, no ands, no buts.
With Kenma, everything was absolute, leaving no room for doubt.
It made Shouyou breathe a little easier.
“I will,” he says, taking in the familiar features of his brothers’ face before he was lost to him. “I promise.”
The next morning is mostly a blur to Shouyou as his father refuses to leave his bedroom, calling his mother unmentionables and Kenma a bastard son for leaving. Standing on their—on his front porch, Shouyou reminds himself bitterly, he watches Kenma climb into the passenger side with his PSP, already clicking his thumbs away with another game. His mother—Haruka Hinata nee Kozume—is standing in front of him, fingers trembling as she holds her youngest tightly in her arms for what may be the last time.
“If you ever need me, little one, never hesitate to call,” his mother says, tears brimming over her familiar golden-brown orbs. Kenma took after their mother just as Shouyou resembled their father. Their genetic pool was picky like that, which was why many people doubted they were related. The only thing that was similar was their eyes, their noses, and their short statures.
Shouyou nods and gives a grin. “I promise. Have a safe trip, you two! Call me when you’re settled.”
“We will,” his mother grins as she visibly forces herself to leave her youngest son behind in a house that was built on misery. “Be happy, Shouyou.”
As his mother and only sibling (for now) leave the grounds, Shouyou sighs and fights back the tears threatening to spill down his face. He shuffles inside, ignoring the way his father has already broken out the alcohol, and trudges to his room where only his belongings reside. It’s empty without Kenma’s gaming devices meticulously placed in a corner or his book bag on top of the desk, or his volleyball idling in the corner of their room. Shouyou swallows the wails that want to pour off his tongue.
It’s his room now.
All his.
Settling into a routine without his mother or Kenma was difficult, especially since his father spends more time with alcohol and random conquests than paying attention to his youngest son. Shouyou feels defensive over his father, even though bitter resentment and anger rattles his ribcage, and he lies to his mother and Kenma when they ask if his father is doing well, and if he’s getting enough to eat at night (and one day, Kenma asks if their father is harming him, peering at him with those sharp, calculating eyes of his. He lies of course, finger twitching to make sure that no bruises were showing). In the darkness of his room, where he can hear the giggling of another woman, another face, Shouyou wishes he was in Tokyo.
It’s only been four months.
Shouyou has never felt so alone and desperate and afraid in his entire life.
“Be happy, Shouyou,” his mother had said.
Shouyou scoffs to himself, turning on his bed, as he hears a bed creaking in the other room, and falls into a slumber of crows and little giants.
One morning, five months into this new life of his, Shouyou gets a call from an unfamiliar number. He answers it and hears a voice on the other side. One he hadn’t heard since his fifth year in elementary school.
“Er – is this Hinata Shou—,” the voice starts to ask.
Shouyou interrupts them with an excited stammer, “T-t-tobio-chan?! K-Kageyama T-tobio?”
“Oi,” came the annoyed reply. “Idiot, how many times have I told you to drop the –chan?”
Stubbornly, Shouyou said, “You will always be Tobio-chan to me. How’d you get my number?”
“Kenma-senpai gave it to me,” Tobio replied. “He’s worried. You haven’t been speaking to him much lately. Is something…going on?”
“No,” Shouyou lies. “Everything is fine over here. He’s just being overprotective.”
It’s obvious his childhood best friend wants to pry some more but Shouyou successfully distracts him by babbling about volleyball and Kitagawa Daichi. It’s over two hours when Shouyou hangs up, knowing his father will be home soon. At school, his three friends flutter around him with concern. They think something is wrong. They see the dark circles under Shouyou’s eyes (the nightmares are getting worse) and Izumi-chan saw a small, greenish bruise on his wrist the other day during PE class.
“We’re worried about you,” Yuki-chan says, worry brimming in her eyes.
“Yeah,” Izumi agrees. “You aren’t as…spritely as you normally are.”
“Is everything alright at home?” Kei-chan questions, blunt and to-the-point.
Shouyou shakes his head. “I’m just tired,” he says. It isn’t a complete lie. He really is exhausted. His father was up all night yelling and throwing things around the Hinata household, saying how much of a disappointment his family was, and how stupid Shouyou is because of his grades. The bruise on his wrist was from when Shouyou took too long to promise his father better grades before the school term ended. As the thought entered his mind, he looked at his friends and asked, “Are any of you busy after school?”
“I have soccer,” Kei-chan said.
“Basketball,” Izumi sighs.
Yuki-chan blinked. “The photography club is taking a break. Why?”
“I want to do a study group,” Shouyou explains, determined. “I need to bring my grades up.”
The trio gawk at him. Normally, Shouyou’s head is filled with volleyball and whimsical nonsense that no one but he and Kenma truly understand. His head is in the clouds and he ignores his schoolwork in favor of practicing his favorite sport.
“I – I’m free this Saturday,” Izumi says, his eyes daring the others to back out of the study group.
Shouyou grins brightly at them, burning like the sun, as the bell rings overhead. He’ll make his family proud.
He won’t ever be a disgrace again.
(that night is the first night his father throws an object at his head, an empty bottle of sake. It shatters as it crashes against the wall, and Shouyou trembles in a corner as his father rages, violent, and frothing at the mouth with venomous words. Shouyou falls asleep in his closet, curling up in a protective ball – the glass shards from the night before have been swept and thrown away once he wakes up for school, and his father leaves the newest sports magazine on his bed as a means of begging for forgiveness. Shouyou forgives him, like always.).
Shouyou spends most of his weekends commuting to Tokyo by train, sleeping over at his mothers’ new, cozy apartment. He meets Kenma’s friends from his high school (Nekoma). Kuroo Tetsurō, Yamamoto Taketora, and Yaku Morisuke. They become surrogate older brothers (even though Kuroo keeps calling him “shrimp-chan”) and the days where they teach him volleyball techniques and coach him are the best days, even though Shouyou doesn’t have the heart to tell them that he’d given up his volleyball dream. It wasn’t possible (and his father wasn’t allowing it to become a reality anymore, and the smell of a raging fire haunts his dreams). Some weekends, Kenma comes to the house in Miyagi. His father is always on his best behavior when he’s home, though for the most part he’s on “business trips”.
Kenma is getting suspicious, asking pensive questions over why he keeps wearing long sleeves or jackets and why he keeps flinching whenever Yamamoto gets too loud, and his mother eyes Shouyou’s thin frame with pursed lips and shrewd eyes.
(Whenever Kenma leaves are the worst moments. His father is a storm, relentless, merciless, and Shouyou is too overwhelmed and frazzled to fight against it—but, in the end, his father apologizes, says he doesn’t mean it, I will control this, Shouyou…I won’t hurt you anymore. I promise. I promise, I’ll get better. I’ll get help.).
It’s a lie. It’s always been a lie that Shouyou numbly accepts as the truth.
Shouyou runs the trails daily, counting each step he takes, until he gets faster and faster (so that he’d become fast enough to evade his father and lunging fists and grasping hands that won’t let him go). Maybe he’ll join track since he couldn’t play volleyball anymore. Izumi stares after him in the halls but doesn’t pry and pester him like Kei-chan and Yuki-chan once he tells them he’s quitting his volleyball dream and focusing on his studies. He still practices whenever Izumi corralled him into it, watching the disconsolate look echo in Shouyou’s eyes.
(but he ends up feeling so guilty about disobeying his fathers’ words and promise that he doesn’t eat for two days and if he does, it ends up in the toilet in an hour or two).
His third year passes by with his exemplary grades (“Not good enough, Shouyou. You’re proud of this crap? Pathetic!” his father screams, ripping the papers to pieces in front of him as he sits quietly at the dinner table, pliant just the way the man prefers him to be), as well as the sharp scent of fire billowing around him as he remembers the night his father forbade him from playing the only sport he loved, burning the only sports equipment he ever possessed, and soon Shouyou finds himself on the grounds of Karasuno High School.
“Do you want to live with mom and I?” Kenma whispers one night in Tokyo.
Shouyou turns his head to face the wall, the moonlight shining from the sky. He ignores the way the desire to say yes wells up inside of his chest, threatening to burst.
“No,” Shouyou lies.
“Are you sure?” Kenma asks.
“Yes,” Shouyou replies.
Kenma gives a little sigh and Shouyou hears his oniisan begin another game on one of his devices. “As long as you’re happy, Shouyou.”
When Kenma rolls over to sleep, Shouyou cries to himself for the rest of the night, wishing he could say the words he desperately needed to.
He ignored the group of third years calling out encouragements to join the volleyball team and makes a beeline for his second favorite thing to do now—art. It helped him focus, and it gave him something distracting to do when his father spiraled into one of his moods. The manager—a girl named Yachi Hitoka—beams excitedly at him as he writes down his name on the clipboard. He walks through the halls to find his classroom (he managed to land himself into Class 4 instead of 2 like normal) and familiarize himself with the grounds.
One week later, he passes the gym and hears the familiar sound of someone perfectly spiking a ball, Shouyou can’t help but creep towards the gym doors and sneak a look. The volleyball team members were all there. It didn’t look like a practice, since some were mingling around and joking. The gym was a bit small but Karasuno wasn’t exactly Aoba Jousai. A taller, older boy with gray hair notices him peering at the team with hesitant, yet curious, eyes.
“Eh?” he calls. “Are you wanting to join the team?”
Shouyou releases a squeak at being found and before he knows it, he’s being surrounded by another boy with barely any hair on his head and a scary face, a strong-shouldered boy with dark hair and smiling, stern eyes, and…
Shouyou gawks. “T-tobio-chan?”
Tobio scowls darkly at him. “Shouyou, stop it with the –chan, already!”
“Never,” Shouyou grins. “You will always be Tobio-chan to me.”
Gray-haired boy laughs warmly. “Kageyama, you know him?”
Tobio gave a nod. “Yeah – this is Hinata Shouyou. Childhood friend.”
“Best friend, Tobio-chan,” Shouyou corrects, pouting a little.
Tobio rolls his eyes.
An extremely tall, blonde, glasses-wearing first-year that’s in Shouyou’s class, rudely says, “Huh. Never thought the King would be friends with mere peasants.”
Tobio growled in Tsukishima’s direction, eyes flaming, as he barked, “Don’t call me that!”
Shouyou blinked in confusion. “King?”
“Oh, you don’t know?” Tsukishima smirked. “About how your childhood bestie got the nickname ‘King of the Court’?”
“Tsukishima,” the gray-haired boy sad in a warning tone before turning back to Shouyou. “Sorry about them. I’m Sugawara Koushi, that’s our captain, Sawamura Daichi, and the one who’s attempting to be intimidating is Tanaka Ryuunosuke.”
“Stop it with the face,” the captain growled in Tanaka-senpai’s direction.
“So do you want to join?” Sugawara asked.
Shouyou chewed on his bottom lip. Joining the team was a major no-no. His father would find out and get really disappointed with him (he was already angry at how Shouyou was in Class 4 instead of 5), and Shouyou was already having difficulty in evading his father at home, delicately stepping around the easily-wounded man. He looked down at his shoes and whispered, “I…I don’t play volleyball anymore.”
Sawamura blinked at him. “Don’t play?”
“Were you injured or something?” Tanaka questioned.
Shouyou played with the hem of his shirt and said, quietly, “Or something.”
Tobio looked at him, pinched eyebrows in befuddlement, “But…you love volleyball…”
Shouyou shrugged and said, “I can’t play it anymore.”
“Can’t?” challenged Tsukishima. “Or won’t?”
Shouyou shook his head. He wouldn’t take the bait. “Can’t,” Shouyou replies. He really couldn’t. “Sorry for disturbing you all—I just…wanted to watch.”
“It’s fine,” the captain smiled warmly at him.
Turning, Shouyou ambles away from the gym, leaving a confused friend and his passion and hopes and dreams there. When he gets home, Kenma calls him ten minutes later.
“Oniisan?” Shouyou greets. “I thought you had practice.”
“Not today,” Kenma replies. “How was the your day?”
“It was alright,” Shouyou says. “Tobio-chan joined the volleyball team and I joined art club.”
Kenma was silent for a moment before he said, “I didn’t know you liked art.”
“It’s just a hobby I picked up a few months ago,” Shouyou said, recognizing the slightly wounded tone in his older brothers’ voice for not knowing of something he enjoys. “It’s very calming.”
“What about volleyball? You love it.”
Shouyou went silent, a ball growing in his throat, as he thought of a lie to tell his older brother.
“Sho-chan?”
“I…I’m not joining.”
“Why not?”
“I….I don’t want to play anymore.”
“Sho-chan.” Kenma said, in a voice that caused Shouyou to freeze and fear to grip his heart. Stop being ridiculous, Shouyou scolds himself mentally, Kenma would never harm you. “Something happened.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
He never was able to lie successfully to Kenma.
“Nothing happened,” Shouyou mumbles. “I just…don’t want to play. I still love the sport, though.”
“What about the Small Giant?”
Anxiety flutters in Shouyou’s stomach. If Kenma kept asking questions, Shouyou would break sooner or later, and the well-built wall surrounding him would crumble indefinitely. “That was just a dream,” Shouyou whispers, echoing his fathers’ venomous words from so long ago. “A stupid, meaningless dream.”
Kenma’s confusion is evident as he says, “…Sho-chan…?”
Shouyou hears his fathers’ car swerve up the driveway and swallows, “I need to go. I’ll call you before I go to bed, okay?” Shouyou hangs up the phone without waiting for a response as his father storms inside of the house. Shouyou leans against his closed door and covers his ears as his father starts yelling. The sharp scent of alcohol burns his nose. Something smashes against the wall and shatters, just like his dreams, like his spirit, like his hope of ever getting away.
The next morning, Shouyou ignores the world in favor of bending over his schoolbooks and studying furiously. Paranoid, he checks every five minutes to make sure the bruises on his arms and torso don’t show, and that he made sure to smother his instinctive flinches whenever someone in class got too loud or passionate. He isn’t successful sometimes, judging by the curious looks some classmates give him. He needed to get into Class 5 by his second year or his father would become an insufferable hurricane blowing through the Hinata household with no signs of stopping.
The lunch bell rings overhead and the class is thrown into a whirlwind of food and friends. Shouyou buries himself with math.
“Oi, Hinata,” calls Tsukishima from the behind him.
Shouyou blinks, glancing in the taller boys’ direction. “Yes, Tsukishima?”
Tsukishima fixes his glasses and says, “Takeda-sensei wants to speak with you.”
“Eh…who?” Shouyou asks. He’s never heard of a Takeda-sensei.
“The volleyball club advisor,” Tsukishima explains. “He wishes to speak with you.”
“Oh…ok.”
Shouyou follows Tsukishima through the throng of people cluttering the hallways until they reach the gym where, predictably, the volleyball team is currently having a small practice session. There were four new people introduced to Shouyou (Ennoshita Chikara, Kinoshita Hisashi, Narita Kazuhito, and Shimizu Kiyoko) once he enters the gym. Tsukishima steers him towards Takeda-sensei, who grins widely at him. The captain calls the curious eyes staring at them to start stretching.
“Ah, Hinata-kun,” the man says kindly. “I was wondering if you would please reconsider your aversion to volleyball for a moment.”
Shouyou blinks. Aversion? “I don’t hate it…I just can’t play anymore.”
Takeda-sensei laughs nervously, rubbing his neck. “Looks like the Tanaka-kun exaggerated. Anyway, you can still be a part of the club even if you don’t play.”
“Like a…manager?” Shouyou questions.
Takeda-sensei nods. “Yes, like that. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
Shouyou’s stomach grumbles. He chews on his bottom lip and hesitantly replies, “It is…okay if I give you an answer next week? I…need some time to think.”
The sensei’s smile is bright. “No problem, Hinata. Take all the time you need.”
Loud voices echo in Shouyou’s ears as Tsukishima and Tobio-chan metaphorically tear at each other’s throats. Shouyou is curious as to what this King of the Court means and what it has to do with Tobio. Shouyou still flinches slightly when the two first years get too loud and Sawamura-senpai grip their heads.
“Er, Hinata-kun?” came the hesitant, soft voice of Shimizu-san, the goddess-like third year manager. Shouyou looks at her, wondering why she was talking to someone like him. “Do you think you could try be a trial-basis manager? You can come by for afternoon practice today, if it’s possible.”
Shouyou blinks. He normally studies after school as well as clean up the house, removing all signs of destruction from his fathers’ previous tantrum, and stares at Kenma’s number in the phone, wishing he had the strength to tell his brother what was really going on in his life. Maybe getting away from the house would be good for him so he agrees to come to after school practice (even if the churning in his stomach doesn’t leave him).
He isn’t hit by any stray volleyballs and before practice ends is when Takeda-sensei rushes into the gym, out of breath, and exclaiming, “I got us a practice session with Aoba Jousai!”
The room erupts with energetic exclamations and cheers. Shouyou shrinks behind Shimizu-san as he startles, heart thumping wildly against his bones.
“But…they have a proposition,” Takeda-sensei says, almost hesitantly.
“What is it, sensei?” Sugawara questions.
“They want Kageyama to be the setter for the entire game,” Takeda-sensei finishes.
Shimizu-san turns to Shouyou and says, “Do you think you could come to the practice game? See the team in action?”
Shouyou remembers swearing to never, ever step on a volleyball court again (not after the last time ended up with him hiding underneath his bed with a broken wrist and a father burning everything he ever cared about)…and yet, he looks at the Karasuno club members, at their passion and excitement over playing a practice game with such a powerful school, and Shouyou finds himself nodding yes.
He hadn’t bothered biking to school, preferring to run now, and made his way outside of his high school. Kenma texted him twice, and Kuroo called him. He chewed on his bottom lip but before he could respond to either, Sugawara calls his name.
“Hinata!” the boy shouts. “Want to come get some pork buns with us?”
Shouyou blinks. “Um…I…”
“They’re really good, Shouyou,” Tobio tell him, eyes silently urging him to agree.
He should get home. He really should but…the air was crisp around him, reminding him of days where he didn’t have to calculate each bite he took or where he didn’t need to accept faked promises of getting better from a man who was supposed to protect him, love him. Tobio stares at him and Shouyou agrees, even though he knows he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t hang around the volleyball team, shouldn’t know their names and that they always eat at the Foothill Store after practice.
“We’re sure gonna have fun at Aoba Jousai,” Narita grins.
“Do you think we’ll win?” Yamaguchi Tadashi asks pensively. “I mean, we’re playing against one of the top schools in the Prefecture.”
“We’ll win,” Sawamura says, confident, grinning. “If not, we’ll still give it our all.”
Shouyou goes home to see his father slumped over the table, half asleep and intoxicated. Another storm has passed through, another glass bottle thrown against the wall, another broken picture. Shouyou sighs, wondering how his life turned out to be like this. He used to be a literal ball of sunshine zooming around the place, energetic and brimming with happiness. Now, though, it was a miracle if he gave a heartfelt smile. Barely anything these days save for his mother, Kenma, and Natsu, gave him the urge to smile like he used to. He helps his father to his room, even though there’s a part of him that wants to leave him there, and draws a warm bath for him.
“Shouyou,” his father slurs, holding a gentle grip on his wrist. “Where’ve you been?”
“Out with friends,” Shouyou replies, hesitantly tugging on his arm, watching his fathers’ grasp drift away.
“You have friends?”
“Yes.”
“I miss Haruka,” his father moans. “Why did she leave me?”
The youngest son doesn’t respond.
Shouyou makes sure his father is sober enough to not drown himself in the tub before secluding himself in his room. His phone is blinking with another text from Kenma.
[Kenma: Shouyou, answer your phone.]
[Kenma: Shouyou, are you okay? You never take this long to answer me or Kuroo.]
[Kenma: call me now]
[Kuroo: oi, shrimp-chan, you’re giving Kenma anxiety. Answer your phone]
Once he assures Kenma and Kuroo that he’s fine, and was simply hanging out with some club members after school, his father is a storm once more, screeching out abuse as he tries to break Shouyou’s door. Shouyou trembles underneath a mountain of clothes in his closet as his father wreaks havoc, a tornado, a monster. He’s discovered, like always, as expected, but after two years of unwillingly being a participant in the middle of these storms, he’s able to detach himself from the reality and float upwards in a different world where this nightmare doesn’t exist, where he isn’t sad.
“Shouyou,” Tobio asks him one day as they climb a tree in the Kageyama’s backyard. “Do you ever wonder what the future will be like?”
“Huh?” Shouyou blinks up at the sky before turning back to Tobio, grinning impishly for a child of nine. “I do, Tobio-chan. In the future, you watch, I will fly!”
“Idiot!” Tobio barks, bonking his friend lightly on the head. “Humans can’t fly! We don’t have wings!”
Shouyou laughs and his smile seems to widen. “Then I’ll make those wings myself.” He turns, determined, and whispers, “You’ll see, Tobio-chan…I’ll be flying one day.”
“Oi! Don’t call me –chan! Idiot!”
His father leaves, bored from Shouyou’s lack of response, and he is left in the middle of the chaos, a brittle, flightless bird that yearned to soar, just like that nine-year-old, eons away in the past. Flying was in the past, as were his dreams. It was ash, floating away with the wind. He was never going to be able to fly, not with the iron ball intent on dragging him down in the depths of the ocean to drown.
The worst part of these days is when his father is sober when he acts like this.
Through sheer luck is how Karasuno wins against Aoba Jousai, especially when Tobio’s senpai enters the court, the Great King. Shouyou snorts—more like the Great Asshole. He doesn’t like Oikawa Tooru. Later that evening, Shimizu asks if he has thought about being a manager of the volleyball team. Passion is thrumming through his veins as he agrees without a thought, remembering the sound of volleyball in an actual game, remembering how he saw that Small Giant fly.
“One more!” Shouyou yells, excitement and fervor inside of him. “One more, Izumi-chan!”
“Alright,” Izumi agrees, eyes twinkling happily at seeing Shouyou like this, as he raises the ball for a toss. “One more. We’ll take a break after this.”
“Sure!”
The next few days is when Karasuno is taken by the storm known as Nishinoya Yu, the Guardian Deity of Karasuno. Shouyou is just amazed he’s taller than the libero, and that he was able to perfectly receive one of Tobio’s serves.
“Are you on the team, Hinata?” Nishinoya questions.
Shouyou shakes his head. “No. I’m the manager besides Shimizu-san. Why aren’t you going to play, Noya-senpai?”
Nishinoya grinned, burning brightly just like Shouyou once. His grin is blinding. “Haha – call me senpai again!”
“Noya-senpai,” Shouyou acquiesced.
“Again!”
“Senpai!”
“One more time!”
Shouyou feels his heart beat to life, feels the spark of glee swirl inside. His grin is unfamiliar on his face but it was welcome.
“Senpai!”
The libero’s laugh echoes throughout Karasuno. Although he wants to, Shouyou doesn’t feel as if he’s alive enough to laugh again.
In the gym, after school, Tobio asks Shouyou, holding a ball in his hands, “Want me to toss to you?”
Shouyou freezes, and his heart is echoing painfully in his ears. The other teammates are looking at him curiously, wondering what he would respond. His fathers’ words, and the crackle of flames and broken dreams, echo in his ears as he turns to look at Tobio.
“You will never play this stupid sport again! Do you understand me, Shouyou?”
“Yes…sir.”
“Promise me, you incompetent brat!”
The smell of burning metal wafts his nose. His world is left broken and shattered at his feet. “I promise, father.”
“I don’t…” Shouyou starts.
Tobio interrupts him. “Just this once?” seeing that Shouyou was about to decline, Tobio scowls and threatens, “I’ll tell Kenma-senpai you broke his Gameboy when we were ten if you don’t.”
Tsukishima snickers in the background. “Didn’t know you had it in you, King.”
Shouyou resists the urge to curse and throw a water bottle at his friends’ head. Kenma really loved that Gameboy. He sighs and shrugs off his bag, already regretting his decision. “This time only,” Shouyou says sternly. Sighing, he strips out of his school jacket, hoping no one would take notice of the bruises littering his arms in discolored patches.
“Let’s have a practice game!” in a booming voice, Tanaka suggests. “One set!”
The other players agree and Shouyou feels like his skin is burning, like he’s drowning as poisonous water fills his lungs. The teams are decided. They aren’t sure where to put Shouyou since they were uncertain of the position he used to play.
“He’s a spiker,” Tobio tells them.
Shimizu already has the point table set out. A whirlwind crashes into his head, screaming in his ears, and Shouyou isn’t sure where it all began and ended.
They set him up as a middle blocker, which Tsukishima and Narita find hilarious. Kinoshita shushes them both.
The little, one-set game begins and Shouyou feels too overwhelmed to know what’s going on until Daichi serves from the other side, and his senses are alert and aware of where the ball is at all times. Shouyou is able to determine the opponents’ moves before they did, able to calculate where the ball would end up and if it could be saved either through skill or desperation. This is where he reigns. This is. This is where he belongs. Shouyou doesn’t know when his legs begin to move as he sees Tanaka about to get blocked if Tobio tossed to him. He ends up on the other side of Tobio within a second, jumping, flying, before the ball connects to his palm, slamming against the linoleum floors of the gym.
The Volleyball team stares in awe. Shouyou keeps his face blank, refusing to show how he felt at that moment—how free, how amazing…how alive.
“When was the last time you played, Hinata?” Tanaka shots at him.
Shouyou blinks, mentally counting the days. “Uh…the winter of my third year in middle school.”
Tobio grunts, looking at him with that signature, irritated glare of his, and says, “No wonder you’re so rusty. You were five seconds late for that toss.”
“Oi!” Shouyou yells, whirling on his childhood best friend. “Stop being so creepy, just because you’re a genius setter means nothing! Stop keeping track of my times!”
Tsukishima and Yamaguchi snicker in the background.
“Have you always been able to do that with Kageyama?” Daichi inquires, a look in his eyes.
Shouyou shakes his head. “No. I’m able to do that quick set with any setter, so long as I, uh, synch with them properly.”
Tanaka and Nishinoya are all fired up, wanting another set, but Shouyou refuses with the guise of needing to do homework and chores.
As he runs home, the feeling of being alive is still thrumming through his veins, and the sense of freedom as he was on that court made Shouyou feel as if he had wings and could fly. A smile breaks across his lips. He hasn’t felt like this in years, decades it seemed. His life had been filled with storms, darkness, hurricanes, tornadoes, and drowning. There was no room for the light, the happiness, the freedom that soaked down to the white of his bone.
“Be happy, Shouyou,” his mother had said.
The sun is barely peaking over the horizon, hidden by blackened clouds of misery.
Maybe…just maybe…Karasuno will help him remember how to live.
Shouyou gets the surprise of his life when it’s announced that they’re going to have a practice match against Nekoma on the last day of Golden Week. Luckily, it doesn’t coincide with anything planned for his art club, and his father will be flying out to America during that week with the new woman that’s hanging off his arms. Shouyou shrugged when he was told that; it meant nothing to him. The woman would be left, in the end, heartbroken and used, left in the dust by a man who never loved her despite whispered promises made in the dark of the night.
Karasuno’s Ace came back—a taller, older looking boy with dark brown hair pulled into a pony tail, Azumane (“Just call me Asahi, please,”) Asahi—and with the Ace returning, so did Nishinoya.
The day he’s packing for Golden Week is when his mother calls him.
“Hello?” Shouyou answers, immediately hearing his little sister, Natsu-chan, in the background speaking in excited tones over some new television show she discovered. “Mom?”
“Ah – Shouyou!” his mother replies. Shouyou can hear the beaming smile in her voice. “I haven’t spoken to you in so long. How’s my baby boy?”
“Mom,” Shouyou whines. “I’m in high school now, I’m not a baby anymore.”
“I know,” his mother sighs. “But I still remember when I first held you in my arms, you know? Anyway, are you busy during Golden Week?”
“Yes,” Shouyou says. “My club has training.”
“Oh, really?” his mother says, an excited tone in her voice. He can picture her dancing on the balls of her feet like she always does when she gets excited. “Little one, did you join the Volleyball Club?!”
“Yes,” Shouyou sighs, awaiting for the eruption.
He isn’t disillusioned.
His mother squeals loudly, exclaiming to the whole world is seemed that Shouyou Hinata has joined a Volleyball Club. Shouyou hears Kuroo and Kenma in the background (“Guess this means I’ll have to beat you in games now, shrimp-chan!” “Good job, Sho-chan!”). His mother was the most disappointed when Shouyou explained that he didn’t want to play volleyball anymore (“I can’t play, okay? I just can’t…”) but only responded with, “Whatever makes you happy, Shouyou. I just want you to be happy.”
Sometimes Shouyou wished his mother pried a little deeper into his reasons for quitting his dream so abruptly. He wished she would show up unannounced during one of his fathers’ episodes and drag him away from the home that was going to end his life one way or another. Shouyou slumps against his bed, staring at a blood stain in the wall he couldn’t scrub away. Maybe this house already killed him, since it seemed like he wasn’t breathing anymore anyway.
Golden Week passed by with Tobio pestering him to join practice (“just to try it, Shouyou!” “No! Tobio-chan, go stretch before you get Daichi-senpai mad!”); with Nishinoya peering after him with intelligent eyes much like Kenma’s (“Hey, Hinata, where’d that bruise come from?” “O-oh, this one? Hehe, I fell down in the kitchen from the counter. I was trying to reach the cereal boxes. I’m so clumsy!”); with Sugawara giving him warm yet worried looks whenever he flinches once someone (mostly Tanaka or Nishinoya, but sometimes Daichi gets too heated or too angry) gets too loud for comfort. And yet, it’s Yamaguchi who seems to have him figured out by observing.
“You flinch too much,” he says one night as they both work together to wash and dry the dishes.
Shouyou freezes, fingers threatening to drop the glass he was holding. “Excuse me?”
Yamaguchi gives a soft sigh before smiling reassuringly at him. “I said that you flinch too often for people to not ask questions,” Yamaguchi explains quietly as he soaps another plate. “Everyone is getting suspicious but it seems like they think you get bothered by loud noises. You flinch for an entirely different reason, huh?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Yamaguchi.” Shouyou says stiffly, focusing on drying the wears placed out before him.
When the Tupperware is clean and dry and safely packed away, Yamaguchi whispers, “I know what it’s like, Hinata. To flinch, to cower, to lie.”
“They get too loud,” Shouyou insists, ignoring the sickening storm brewing in the pit of his stomach; freezing temperature and unnatural churn. “There’s nothing more to that.”
Peering at him with knowing yet disconsolate eyes, Yamaguchi gives a nod. “Got it, Hinata. It was my mistake.” And when Shouyou whirls around to leave, he pretends not to hear, “I wish you the best of luck, Hinata Shouyou…”
Shouyou skids into the bathroom, leaning heavily against the sink, remembering the way Yamaguchi knew and understood by simple flinches—before Shouyou understands what’s happening, he’s hovering over the toilet and his dinner spills out of his throat. It isn’t the first time this has happened, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but Shouyou can’t help but think of how disappointed everyone would be when they unearthed the one of the very secrets he’d take to his grave.
He walks out, thinking he’s alone in the hallway, but startles when Tanaka appears from the shadows in the halls.
“Are you alright, Hinata?” the second-year questions.
“Who, me?” Shouyou says, voice trembling. “I-I’m fine, Tanaka-senpai. There’s no need to worry about me.”
“Everyone’s worrying, Hinata,” Tanaka says. “We all want you to feel welcome on the team but…you’re so closed off. You don’t let anyone in.”
Shouyou wishes he could defend himself, wishes he could disagree with what Tanaka was saying—except, he couldn’t. It was the truth. Shouyou was too afraid of letting someone else in, and having his world get ripped to pieces once more.
“I…” Shouyou whispers. “I’m scared.”
Tanaka’s eyebrows pinch together in confusion. “Of what?”
“Of getting hurt again,” Shouyou explains, looking up. “I…I don’t want to get hurt anymore.”
Tanaka is speechless for a moment before an easy smile slides on his face. “It’s okay—your senpai is here to protect you! Hahahaha!”
That’s not what I meant, Shouyou yearns to say. I’m not afraid of you hurting me…I’m afraid of my father…
Nekoma High School was familiar to Shouyou’s eyes—the new members on Kenma’s team, however, were not. As Karasuno walks towards the gym doors, they’re intercepted by the lumbering captain—Kuroo.
“Oi, what do you want?” Tanaka asks darkly, his face twisting into what he assumes is intimidating.
“Shrimp-chan, it’s been a while,” Kuroo smirks.
Nishinoya looks offended, already about to burst to fight the unknown male in front of them, when Shouyou shouts, “Oi! Kuroo! Stop calling me shrimp-chan! My name is Shouyou!”
“You will always be shrimp-chan to me,” Kuroo laughs before ruffling Shouyou’s hair, messing it up even more.
“Shut up,” Shouyou says before looking around curiously. “Where’s my oniisan?”
“Inside,” Kuroo says.
The group behind him gives confused looks. When Karasuno enters the large gym of Nekoma, Shouyou’s eyes pinpoint Kenma immediately.
“Oniisan!” Shouyou greets. “Kenma!”
“K-Kenma-senpai is your oniisan?” asks a younger member of the Nekoma volleyball team.
“Yes,” Shouyou blinks.
“Sho-chan,” Kenma greets as he slinks over to give Shouyou a hug. “Natsu misses you.”
“I miss her too,” Shouyou says, relishing the warmth he feels from Kenma’s arms.
The Battle at the Garbage Dump began. Kenma eyes him curiously when he sits down next to Shimizu-san but is soon enthralled in the practice game. Shouyou, although hoping differently, already knows how the game will go. Karasuno didn’t have a coach until Ukai came from the Foothill Store and the team is like a dysfunctional family yet still able to connect to one another. Nekoma, on the other hand…are flexible, dependent, and few balls are able to touch their side of the court. Karasuno managed to win the first set but Nekoma dominated the second, and last, set. As they head towards the busses, Kenma calls Shouyou for a moment.
“Yeah, Kenma?” Shouyou asks.
Kenma peers at him, his normally passive eyes are flaming. The words that fall out of his mouth make the world around Shouyou crash and fall.
“Who gave you those bruises, Sho-chan?”
When Shouyou goes home, Kenma’s question is still ringing in his ears. Thankfully, Suga-senpai had called to his attention, saying that they were about to leave. The house is empty and quiet but he feels restless so he slips on his shoes and goes out into his backyard, sitting down on the back porch. He still remembers the heat of the flames, the sound it made. He will always remember the day his dreams and hopes were brutally slaughtered in front of him.
His father doesn’t return from his trip for another week but Shouyou is too busy with practice, learning what Shimizu-san does for the team, and deflecting his persistent older brother. He wants to let everyone know but he can’t. His world was already destroyed once, and Shouyou will be damned if his fragile, rebuilt one will crumble as well.
“Be happy, Shouyou.”
His days are filled with studying and ignoring the way Yamaguchi peers knowingly at him whenever he cringes. It’s filled with texts and calls from Kenma and his mother and Kuroo, who are all worried about him and Sho-chan, please tell me what’s wrong. I just want you to be happy. His days are filled with dysphoria and anxiety and hopeless dreams falling like ashes from the sky. His days are filled with flightless birds with domineering fathers’, too afraid to spread their wings to soar with the wind.
His days are filled with lies.
His nights are busy with hiding, cowering, shivering, in closets underneath a protective layer of clothes and boxes as a father roars overhead, destroying anything and everything Shouyou holds dear. His nights are filled with tears and pain and agony as he stares at his blinking cell phone, wishing he had the strength, the courage, to dial the number. It’s filled with hurricanes and monsters wreaking havoc without a care. It’s filled with worlds crumbling, in pieces at his toes. It’s filled with words of hatred spewing out the mouth of a man who once whispered I will never hurt you again, Shouyou. I promise.
Shouyou doesn’t know what to do anymore.
“…if he ever becomes too much to handle, Sho-chan…you will come to me.”
He’s drowning.
“I know what it’s like. To cower…to fear…”
He’s falling.
“…just watch, one day I’m going to fly!”
He doesn’t know what it means to be alive anymore.
“I will never step on another volleyball court again.”
Two months after the Battle at the Garbage Dump in Nekoma finds Shouyou in town, drifting through shops to think of birthday presents for Natsu and Kenma. His family (not his father. Never his father) give him what little happiness he is still able to feel. Shouyou has gotten exhausted lately, too tired with covering up the bruises that litter his body like a canvas. He doesn’t care for the gawking eyes that follow him in the halls or the concerned looks of his Volleyball team or the whispered conversations his teachers’ have when they think he can’t hear them. The façade is wearing him down, dragging him under.
It’s too exhausting to breathe now.
Two hours later, Shouyou lightly jog back home with shopping bags in his arms. His father isn’t home, which makes Shouyou breathe a little easier, and he makes his way inside to his room, making sure to hide the presents in a good spot too difficult for his father to find and reach. His phone vibrates with a text from Yamaguchi.
[Yamaguchi: r u ok?]
[Shouyou: Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?]
[Yamaguchi: you’ve been more tired. Is everything alright?]
Shouyou pauses his fingers over the keys on his phone and chews on his bottom lip. He’s been lying for so long. Why was he hesitating to lie to Yamaguchi? Over a text message, no less? Shouyou sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. Maybe he hesitates because Yamaguchi knows, understands, what really happens behind closed doors. Yamaguchi has been through this.
[Shouyou: what are you doing now?]
[Yamaguchi: ?? I was reading b4 I texted u]
[Shouyou: I want to talk to you. In person.]
They decide to meet at a small park only five minutes away from Karasuno. Shouyou runs there because running was another way to fly, and the wind whispers against his skin with such freedom, Shouyou wishes he could be a part of it. Yamaguchi is waiting for him near one of the park benches. The screeches and laughter of small children scurrying about lessens the chance of them being overheard.
“Hey,” Yamaguchi greets.
“Hi,” Shouyou whispers.
They sit across from one another. Shouyou awkwardly looks at the wooden bench table.
“What’d you want to talk about?” Yamaguchi questions.
Shouyou draws in a deep breath before asking, “How’d you do it?”
Yamaguchi is visibly confused until understanding shines through his eyes and he gives Shouyou a small smile. “How’d I get away?” Yamaguchi sighs. “Man, I remember it so clearly. It was during middle school, my second year. It was Tsukki that helped me. You see, my father passed away when I was younger in a car accident and my mother blamed me for it, so I suppose that’s when it all started. Anyway, Tsukki noticed the bruises and how I’d act so terrified around the female teachers. He didn’t say anything about his observations until he got his older brother, Akiteru, to investigate. That day…I used to think it was the worst day they found me when it was really the luckiest day of my life. Akiteru-san called their father, who worked with cases such as these.”
“What’d Akiteru-san find?” Shouyou questions.
A dark yet resigned look crosses over Yamaguchi’s features as he responds, “My mother trying to kill me.”
Shouyou’s heart haults. “Y-yamaguchi….”
“It’s alright, Hinata,” Yamaguchi soothes. “I’ve…I’ve learned to cope with it. But why did you come to me, Hinata? Why not one of our senpai’s?”
“Because you understand,” Shouyou whispers. “You…you know how terrified I am.”
Yamaguchi reaches over to squeeze Shouyou’s hand gently. “Do you want to get out?”
Shouyou looks up and stares into Yamaguchi’s eyes before he says, firmly yet voice still breaking, “I want to be happy.”
“Be happy, Shouyou.”
“As long as you’re happy.”
“I just want you to be happy, Sho-chan!”
Shouyou goes back home, breathless, and feeling his invisible wings rustle, yearning to stretch and soar. Yamaguchi was going to speak to Tsukishima-san about his situation and brainstorm with a plan from there. They’d need evidence for one thing, Shouyou knows indefinitely. His father isn’t home, as usual, but a message is left on his phone from his mother.
[Mom: Hope you’re feeling better, Shouyou! I wish you’d smile more! Natsu says hi!]
Yamaguchi drags him into a private area during lunch the next day, bearing news. Shouyou feels himself vibrating.
“Well?” he says.
“I talked to Tsukishima-san,” Yamaguchi begins. “They need evidence, though, before they are able to breach the idea of an investigation. He’s pulling in some favors and such, and he’s going to talk to your teachers, too.”
Shouyou knows the hidden message. It may take months for this to be accomplished.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Yamaguchi says softly, hating the heartbroken look on Shouyou’s face. He grips Shouyou’s shoulders. “It’s going to be alright. You’ll get through this.”
Shouyou sniffles. “Thanks, Yamaguchi.”
“No problem,” he grins. He turns to leave, presumably to go back to Tsukishima, but Shouyou calls his name. “Yeah, Hinata?”
Shouyou bites his bottom lip, shy, before saying, “You…you can call me Shouyou!”
Yamaguchi blinks, shocked, before smiling. “Alright, Shouyou. You can call me Tadashi.”
It became a routine while Tsukishima-san tirelessly tried to gather evidence. Yamaguchi and Shouyou met before school so Yamaguchi could tend to any bruises or welts Shouyou missed, as well as before practice if there was time. The rest of the team peers after them with curious eyes, especially when the two refer to one another by their first names without a thought. During class, as Shouyou bends over to grab his pencil from the floor, his shirt rides up slightly which displays a bruise from when his father pushed him into the counter. Tsukishima is the only one who spots it, remembering the days where Yamaguchi walked eggshells around females and mother figures, and cowered at the slightest sign of violence.
The blond corners Shouyou before afternoon practice. “Who gave you that bruise?”
Shouyou blinks, inwardly sweating. “W-what are you talking about, Tsukishima?”
“The bruise on your side,” Tsukishima says, pointing to it. “Where’d you get it? Who did that?”
Shouyou’s throat closes and his hear seizes. He isn’t sure of what to say, what to do, or how to process the scene playing in front of him. “Why do you care?” Shouyou questions.
Coldly, Tsukishima replies, “I don’t,” before giving him one last look as he whirls around on his heel to get changed.
Shouyou breathes out a sigh of relief. He wishes the day was over already.
“Sho-chan, who’s hurting you?”
When his father comes home, unrepentant and unforgiving, Shouyou ends up with three more bruises on the canvas called his body. He curls up into a ball near the living room couch—he doesn’t have the energy to crawl back to his bedroom. He doesn’t go to school the next day. He’s too tired, too worn down. His wrist burns with pain and Shouyou is pretty sure it’s broken. His phone is tossed on his bed, blinking rapidly. He fingers ache to dial a number, any of them, but he resists and focuses on the homework assignments he hadn’t completed.
Shouyou enters the weekend in a ball in his closet once more. His father was having a fit in the middle of the day. Shouyou trembled—he needed to be at the station in thirty minutes! His father screams his name, storming through the house. Shouyou wishes he had neighbors but they’d probably ignore what was going on if he did. His phone is held tightly in his hands. Tears threaten to fall as he father kicks open his door and starts another storm, becomes the monster in his nightmares.
“Be happy, Shouyou.”
Shouyou is dialing a number before he understands what’s going on.
“Sho-chan?” Kenma answers, a stream of noise entering through the receiver. “What’s up?”
“Where are you?” Shouyou whispers as loudly as he dares.
“It was supposed to be a surprise, Sho-chan,” Kenma sighs. “Did Kuroo tell you we were coming?”
Shouyou heard Natsu squealing, “niichan,” on repeat in the background, and their mothers’ soft, laughing voice. Kuroo is indignant (“I said nothing to shrimp-chan!”).
Horror creeps up Shouyou’s spine. Why are they in Miyagi? Why are they here? They couldn’t be. Not now. Not now.
“Why?” Shouyou whispers. “You need to leave. You need to—,”
His father shocks the life out of him by grabbing his ankle, dragging him out of the closet, his safe haven, forcibly, which caused a scream to tear out of his throat. He can hear the others on the other side of his phone, concerned and scared of what was going on. Shouyou’s eyes widen with fear as his father lumbers over him.
“Wait – Dad, wait—,”
His world erupts into a white haze of blinding hot agony before he’s able to understand what was going on. Fingers enclose around his neck, squeezing, choking.
He’s choking.
He’s being choked.
I’m going to die.
His father is shouting in his face, an irate storm hell-bent on murder. Shouyou struggles but, as always, his father is too strong. Too tall. Too buff. Shouyou can’t fight this battle by himself. He chokes, flailing, and tears tremble down his face as black spots swirl around his vision, mixing in with the colors painting the world. He doesn’t want to die just yet but the world bleeds into familiar darkness. He wants to feel the wind whispering against his skin. He wants to climb trees with Tobio-chan. He wants to play volleyball and piece together his dreams of volleyball courts and small giants learning to fly.
“Do you want to get out?”
“I want to be happy.”