Chapter Text
summer
Osaka is the third largest prefecture in Japan by population, surpassed only by Kanagawa and Tokyo. Osaka holds nine million people, and takes up 1905 square kilometers. Osaka is the second smallest prefecture in the country by size. Osaka city, the capital of the prefecture of the same name, is home to historic sites, colleges, parks, regional cuisine and traditions, 2.7 million people, and Sakusa Kiyoomi.
Osaka city feels impossibly large, even for Sakusa Kiyoomi, who grew up in Japan’s first-largest city and thought Osaka would feel quaint in comparison. Osaka city is 515 kilometers away from Tokyo by train, meaning it would take 2 hours and 20 minutes on the fastest bullet train, or closer to 5 hours on a train affordable via Kiyoomi’s student budget. For Kiyoomi, 515 kilometers seems like it might as well span an ocean.
His mother calls him the first night after she and his father leave him at the Osaka University freshman dorms, and he does not let his voice waver. He does not have a roommate—single room secured via university accommodations, or else he doubts he would have attended at all—but he does have a suitemate, who is polite enough to realize he does not know Kiyoomi well enough to ask why his eyes are red when they run into each other in the bathroom.
Kiyoomi’s never been good with change. He’s played left since he was seven, has worn the same brand of socks since he was five, has slept in the same bedroom since the day he was born, when his parents brought him home from the hospital and moved him straight into a room painted too-bright yellow, which he never changed even when they offered. Not because he liked it, but because that was the color his room was supposed to be. His new volleyball uniform is white with purple accents, and it itches on his skin. It doesn’t match his shoes. The socks are the same.
The university volleyball gym is open long before the rest of campus. Kiyoomi walks in his second day on campus to the familiar sound of volleyballs smacking into the floorboards, and the less familiar sound of Bokuto Koutaro’s voice calling out to him.
“Hey hey, Sakusa-kun!” he calls, so friendly Kiyoomi briefly thinks he must have forgotten a friendship between them. Kiyoomi reels back as Bokuto gets close, sweat already dripping off of each spike of his owlish hair. “Bokuto Koutaro! You remember me!”
It’s not really a question, but Kiyoomi nods anyway, adjusting his mask around his nose. “Nice to see you again, Bokuto-san.”
“I was so excited to hear you were coming to Osaka!” Bokuto says. “When we played you guys in high school, like, wow! You were amazing!”
Kiyoomi blinks. “Thank you.”
“And, I mean, you were only a second-year when we played you! I’m sure you’ve gotten even better since then, you look taller now! And I’m sure you’ve gotten stronger—”
“Bokuto-san,” Kiyoomi says. Bokuto, for all his gesticulating and shouting, stops as soon as Kiyoomi speaks. “My apologies. Could you point me towards the locker room?”
Bokuto is frozen for another second before he throws his head back and laughs, like he thinks Kiyoomi has just said something incredibly funny. Kiyoomi’s brow pinches.
“Sure thing!” Bokuto says. He twists to point at a door on the opposite wall. “Just over there! There should be a locker with your name on it! I think you can get a lock from coach if you don’t have one already—”
“Thank you,” Kiyoomi says. Bokuto nods, and waves brightly as he retreats.
He changes quickly, but by the time Kiyoomi emerges from the lockers, the team is already lined up at the far end of the gym, running drills he’s missed the explanation of. The whole team sprints towards him at once when the assistant coach blows his whistle, stumbling to a stop just short of bowling into him.
“Sakusa-kun!” Bokuto waits for him to jog over as the rest of the team starts the next sprint, waving him into line next to him. “We’re just sprinting! To the line on the other side and then back on the whistle.”
“Thank you,” Kiyoomi says. Bokuto nods and darts off in a dead sprint, and Kiyoomi follows. The whistle’s blowing again just as they reach the opposite side, so there’s no break between the first sprint and the second. They’re both trailing behind as the rest of the team reaches the line again.
“Am I late?” Kiyoomi says, in the second they have before the next one. Bokuto shakes his head. The whistle blows again.
“Practice starts at 7,” Bokuto says, between heavy breaths. Kiyoomi looks up at the clock—only 7:01. “We gotta— huff —show up early to warm up on our own, though.”
“Oh.”
Tweet, tweet, as the assistant coach blows the whistle twice this time. “Last one!” Bokuto announces. He grins, looking far too elated for a simple warm-up drill, and presses forward. Kiyoomi keeps up his pace and Bokuto and a couple of the other guys fight each other for the fastest, laughing and shoving at each other playfully until they stumble over the end line. Kiyoomi hunches over with his hands on his knees, catching his breath.
After a moment, the rest of the team starts to form up around the coaches in a semicircle huddle. Kiyoomi trots after them, breaths still heavy, a half-step behind all the others.
There are three freshmen joining the team. The coaches line them up in front of the rest of the team and have them introduce themselves one by one. Kiyoomi is the only one who gets to practice with B team—opposite the net from the starters—while the others are relegated to the reserves. They give him smiles that are polite and nothing else as they break out of line to split off into separate courts.
“Don’t worry about it,” Bokuto says, from across the net, while the managers are tossing out balls to the first servers for scrimmages. Bokuto is the only sophomore starter—the rest are all juniors and seniors. “Happened to me too.”
“I don’t care what they think of me,” Kiyoomi says.
“Okay,” Bokuto says. From anyone else Kiyoomi thinks it would sound patronizing. The first serve from B team’s setter flies over both their heads.
The volleyball part, at least, is simple. A team’s libero receives effortlessly, sending the ball in a high, perfect arch over the setter’s head. Left, left! from Bokuto, here! from A team’s right side. Kiyoomi jumps in time with B’s middle to block. Someone cheers on the court next to them. The ball whiffs off Kiyoomi’s outstretched fingers and flies up behind him.
One touch! Kiyoomi calls, and this, he’s hungry for. Receive, set, left, here! Kiyoomi starts running before the ball touches the setter’s hands, meets the leather a second later, but the impact isn’t right. It goes over, but barely. Team A’s setter sends it to the middle, this time, and the ball is on the ground at Kiyoomi’s feet before he’s had a chance to recover.
Kiyoomi’s breathless, starving, the kind that makes you shaky and weak instead of desperate. B team’s setter raises a hand in apology.
“New kid,” he says. “Higher? Your vertical’s pretty impressive.”
“Sakusa,” Kiyoomi offers. “Higher.”
The setter nods, eyes trained somewhere on the other side of the court. “Got it.”
The next three go to the right, and then the next one to the middle. The following ball goes to him, and he whiffs again—this one doesn’t even go over, hitting the tape in front of his face instead.
He calls for the next ball, same as all the previous ones, but when it comes to him for the second time in a row he almost isn’t ready for it, and so he isn’t thinking as he jumps, twists his shoulder around, slams down just inside the line on the opposite side of the net. He barely feels the adrenaline of it as the rest of B team whoops and cheers. Bokuto grins at him with a giddy thumbs up. Someone on the back line claps him on the shoulder.
“Just gotta get out of your head a little, huh?” the setter says. Kiyoomi doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he doesn’t. The next ball flies. Kiyoomi calls for it again.
Volleyball is, like everything else, a matter of routine.
There’s a difference between familiar and easy. For the first couple weeks, the routine of it is neither. Familiar is highlighter uniforms and Motoya hovering in the entryway in his white sneakers before the sun has come up and his underclassmen’s steady trust, heavy on his shoulders like a weighted blanket. Familiar is his yellow bedroom and the same brand of protein bars his mother always slipped into the side pocket of his backpack for lunch. The convenience store nearest the dorm doesn’t sell the right protein bars. Bokuto’s trust is loud, and unearned, and unsteadying. Kiyoomi’s perpetually off balance. He walks to class with sea legs, and comes back to a dorm with stark white walls.
And Kiyoomi’s teeth itch, but he knows himself. It’s a matter of routine, and routines must be established somewhere. It’s practice, cafe, class, library, class, practice, homework, sleep. If he does it enough, unfamiliar will become familiar, and familiar will become easy. If he does it enough, the ache between his ribs will fade.
“You got too used to us,” Motoya says. His face is blurry on Kiyoomi’s phone screen, propped up against his water bottle. Kiyoomi adjusts his headphones over his ears as a librarian walks past. “When’s the last time you played on a non-Itachiyama team, huh?”
“Itachiyama prep wasn’t all the same guys.”
“Yeah, but it was, like, 80% of the same guys,” Motoya says. “So, what, like, elementary school?”
“Nationals training camp.”
“That was different.” Motoya waves a dismissive hand. “You were too busy picking fights with all the setters to do your whole—” Motoya gestures broadly. Kiyoomi glares. “—thing. Hey, maybe that’s what you should do! Any setters you can arbitrarily decide to hate?”
“It wasn’t arbitrary,” Kiyoomi says. “And I didn’t hate Kageyama.”
“Maybe you need to find something else to be busy with, then,” Motoya says. “How’s class going?”
Kiyoomi clicks his pen, four times in even intervals. “I just need to get used to it.”
Motoya frowns, because he knows him. Kiyoomi resents the pity but misses the knowing. “Sorry,” he says. “You’ll get it soon.”
The other thing about volleyball, though, is that Kiyoomi is really good at it. This much he’s certain of. Every day he stretches, and runs drills, and jumps for toss after toss after toss, and every day B team’s setter—Sakishima—sends him balls that are hittable, even if not much else. Kiyoomi hits them because he’s very good. Most of the time he scores. The thrum of white leather under his palm will always be familiar, even if the setting and the uniform and the just-uneven arc of it into his hand isn’t, and as long as that familiarity is there Kiyoomi can cling to it so his nose doesn't sink below the waterline.
“Higher, please,” Kiyoomi says, and feels like a broken record.
“Got it,” Sakishima says, although his tone says he feels like a broken record too. They have that in common, at least. The next one goes over, even if Kiyoomi has to clip it with the side of his palm to make it happen. Scoring is familiar, even if it doesn’t feel as good anymore.
Just as classes begin to settle into something like routine, it’s midterms, and everything turns on its head.
On Monday, Kiyoomi goes to 3 classes—the first of which starts a mere five minutes after morning practice ends—skips the usual team library study group to meet with his advisor, doesn’t get to eat lunch until his hands are shaking with the hypoglycemia, and gets a dinner invitation from Bokuto and one of the other sophomores, which he declines in favor of eating microwave curry in his dorm room, hunched over a 3-years out of date chemistry textbook, all the page numbers one off from the syllabus. On Tuesday, Kiyoomi is at the library so late he closes them out, which isn’t something he was aware they did; a tired-eyed student employee comes up to him with a pleading sort of expression. Kiyoomi takes pity on them, but not on himself, and he goes back to his dorm and does another 3 hours of studying before he falls asleep.
By Wednesday, Kiyoomi thinks his body might have started to adapt to the near-constant exhaustion and hunger, and works long into the night finishing his readings with a masochistic sense of satisfaction. On Thursday, Kiyoomi realizes that Wednesday Kiyoomi was gravely mistaken, and fights his way through a solo morning workout, two lectures, a tutoring session, a couple hours under the flickering lights in the library’s fifth floor study rooms, and evening practice with a headache that began threatening to take him out entirely the second he deigned to pull himself out of his bed. Bokuto invites him over to his apartment after practice—because Akaashi’s in town, and I think you would really like Akaashi, Sakkun, and he’s in a classic lit class right now too, and you’ve been really enjoying that book you’re reading right, and Akaashi likes reading, too—and Kiyoomi declines. Bokuto, ever magnanimous, accepts his refusal with a bright smile and a promise to invite him next time, too.
Friday brings with it labs and meetings with project groups and homework deadlines. Morning practice, shower, first coffee, chem lab, second coffee, meeting, bio lab, third coffee, this one not to stay awake, but to fend off the caffeine headache that Kiyoomi absolutely cannot deal with right now. Text from Bokuto that Kiyoomi does not read, afternoon practice, shower, trudge home. Another text, buzzing his phone in his jacket pocket, followed by the more persistent buzz of a call a couple minutes later.
“Hi Sakkun!” Bokuto says, before Kiyoomi can give a proper hello. “We’re going out tonight! Me and Fujihara-san and Sato and ‘Kaashi and Sato’s girlfriend. To that bar by the train. Wanna come?”
“Can’t,” Kiyoomi says. “My apologies, Bokuto-san, I just have this paper—”
“No worries!” Bokuto says, and the fact that he clearly means it so earnestly only makes Kiyoomi feel worse. “Just don’t overwork yourself, ok, Sakkun? You’re really smart, so I know you’ll be ok even if you take breaks!”
Kiyoomi looks at the glaring white of his blank document, and the scattered papers littering his desk. The mess seeps over the edge of his physical space and into his brain, too, focus wavering at the edges. He blinks, like that will do anything. “Thank you,” he says. “I’m sorry. Thank you.”
The background city noise ends when the call does, but the buzzing in Kiyoomi’s brain doesn’t. He turns the brightness up on his laptop two notches and takes a swig of cold, corrosive coffee.
Kiyoomi spends the weekend much the same as he spends the week, which is to say fitfully and headachey. Motoya calls once, on Saturday morning.
“Are you, like, going outside?” he says. “I can see the sun outside your window. You’re gonna get scurvy or something. From vitamin D deficiency.”
“Scurvy is vitamin C,” Kiyoomi says.
“See, you’ll be fine,” Motoya says. “How’s Bokuto-san?”
“What happened to being quiet while I studied?” Kiyoomi says. Motoya chuckles. “I don’t know. He’s fine, I guess?”
“You’re still hanging out with him?”
Bokuto’s last unread message stares up at Kiyoomi, a taunting little blue dot next to their text conversation. “Sometimes.”
“Not just at practice?”
“Is this an interrogation?” Kiyoomi snips. “I don't know. Sometimes. I’ve been busy.”
“You need friends, Kiyo,” Motoya says, as if he thinks Kiyoomi doesn’t know this already. “It’ll be less hard if you do it more.”
Bokuto texts again on Sunday—Akaashi’s leaving today! We would love to see you if you’re free!—and does not comment further when Kiyoomi fails to even take the time to reject him.
There’s no morning practice the following Monday, so the first time Kiyoomi sees Bokuto again is at the end of the day, when they’re both tying their sneakers on the sidewalk outside the gym. Kiyoomi expects some sort of disdain in return for his continued rejections, or at least a faker smile, perhaps, but Bokuto has always been nice, and only beams at him the same as always.
“Sakkun!” he says. “Run with me today?”
Kiyoomi blinks up at him, crouched next to the open the gym door, one sneaker half-tied. One of the older guys—Suzuki, captain and one of A team’s outsides—chuckles from his spot next to them.
“You don’t have to,” Suzuki says. “You know how far ahead he gets. None of us can keep up with him.”
Something in Bokuto’s face, then, feels like looking in a mirror. The ache in Kiyoomi’s chest reflects back and forth between them until it stretches into the infinite distance, paradoxically shrunk and amplified at once.
“No, I will,” Kiyoomi says. The smile he gets, then is gleaming and simple in its intention. “Thank you, Bokuto-san.”
Bokuto shoots him a thumbs up, zips his jacket all the way up to his chin, and takes off before the rest of the team has even finished stretching.
The first time Kiyoomi ran with the team, he was worried they had somehow left Bokuto back at the gym; he had walked outside with him, huddled in with the rest of the team, zipped up his jacket against the chill of the autumn air, kneeled down to tie his sneakers, and by the time he looked up again, Bokuto was nowhere in sight. After a minute, Aiki—A team’s right side—saw him looking and pointed far ahead to a pointy-haired speck in the distance. Bokuto—with some weird intuition for whether he was being observed—had turned, ran backwards for a moment to wave at them, twisted back around, and started running even faster.
Aiki’s giving him the same look now that he did then; knowing, like they’re both short of understanding Bokuto together; and a little humored, like the enigma of him is funny instead of deeply terrifying. Kiyoomi feels closer to understanding him from that look alone.
Bokuto startles when Kiyoomi jogs up next to him—despite the invite he extended minutes earlier—and Kiyoomi only has a brief half-second to wonder if Bokuto really meant it before he’s treated to a grin so blinding Kiyoomi’s sure Bokuto must be mistaking him for someone else.
“Hey,” Kiyoomi says, a little short of breath from the sprint required to catch up.
“Hi, Sakkun!” Bokuto says. “You’re really fast!”
“Thank you.”
“I’m really glad. It gets boring running by myself.” He’s quiet for a second. Kiyoomi hears only the sounds of their footsteps, thunk thunk thunk ing on the pavement. And then: “Are you upset with me, Sakkun?”
Kiyoomi blinks, falters in his step. “What?” he says. Bokuto’s gaze remains straight ahead, his form as sharp as ever. “No. I’m not. Why would you think that?”
“You’ve been avoiding me today, I think,” he says. “We always stretch together and you didn’t want to stretch with me today. And you haven’t been very talkative or anything.”
“Am I ever talkative?”
“No,” Bokuto says. “But even for you.”
“I’m not upset with you,” Kiyoomi repeats. They round a corner, the rest of the team disappearing behind the bend as they proceed. “I honestly thought you would be upset with me .”
Bokuto frowns. “What? Why?”
“I ignored your texts,” Kiyoomi says. “I didn’t go out with you and Akaashi-san this weekend. I’ve been generally pretty inconsiderate to you, I think.”
“You had your paper. And midterms and stuff.”
“Still,” Kiyoomi says. “Everyone has papers.”
“I wouldn’t be mad at you for something like that,” Bokuto says. “We’re friends. I’d be a pretty bad friend if I got mad that you were busy doing your homework.”
All at once, the ache swells through his chest and stomach until Kiyoomi feels swallowed whole by it, so quickly he has no chance to stop it from overwhelming him. He watches Bokuto double-take from the edges of his vision. He inhales, and hot embarrassment burns his face when it comes out more like a sniffle.
“Sakkun?” Bokuto says. He slows as Kiyoomi stumbles and his pace falters.
“I don’t—,” Kiyoomi chokes. “I don’t know what’s happening—”
“Are you ok?”
“Fine,” Kiyoomi says. His vision blurs a bit, his eyes growing wet as his body’s unprovoked betrayal encroaches further. “I’m fine.”
“Ok,” Bokuto says.
“Really,” he insists. He turns back down the path as the rest of the team starts to appear behind them; he and Bokuto are nearly at a standstill. “I’m ok, I don’t know why I’m—”
“Ok,” Bokuto repeats. “I know you are.”
“You two alright?” Suzuki’s voice, close enough now that he can see them clearly. Kiyoomi’s never felt so mortified. Bokuto ushers him forward.
“All good!” Bokuto calls. He turns back to Kiyoomi. “Keep going?”
Kiyoomi nods and swallows the lump in his throat. Bokuto is careful to not look at his face as they turn back down the path and pick up to the same pace as before.
The team slowly but surely disappears behind them again after a couple minutes. It’s peaceful , in a way. The cool morning air is a balm on Kiyoomi’s reddened face. Bokuto’s silent, his footfalls even and in time with Kiyoomi’s. Kiyoomi can speed up when the restless energy pools in his legs without worrying about leaving Bokuto behind.
“Please don’t tell Suzuki-san that I—” Bokuto turns to look at him again. “What happened. Whatever that was.”
“I won’t,” Bokuto says. “If you don’t want me to.”
“Thank you,” Kiyoomi says, and then, embarrassingly childish, “We’re friends?”
“Of course?” Bokuto says. “You don’t think we are?”
“That’s not—” Kiyoomi shakes his head. “I just mean, I know I’m not very good, at all this—”
“I think I know what you’re thinking, Sakkun, and I don’t really fit in with the team either, sometimes.”
Kiyoomi blinks, stunned from the apparent mind reading, or from the idea that the nicest person he’s ever met might not fit in anywhere, he isn’t sure. “Don’t look at me like that! Really!”
“They all like you,” Kiyoomi says. “You’re friends with them. You spend time with them all the time outside of practice.
“Sure.” Bokuto nods. “They’re really nice guys, y’know! And they’re a good team! Volleyball is the most important thing in the world to me, though.” Bokuto’s face goes steely and determined. “I’m gonna be the best spiker in the whole world, someday, Sakkun! So I gotta keep thinking about that and working hard every day to get there. The rest of the team works hard too, but they don’t care about it the same way. I think they think I’m a little silly, sometimes, when I say I’m gonna be the best, but I really mean it!”
Kiyoomi doesn’t know how anyone could ever take Bokuto at anything less than his word. “I know you do.”
“You want to go pro, Sakkun?”
Kiyoomi nods. “Of course.”
“Why?”
“I love volleyball,” Kiyoomi says. “I’m going to be the best in the world one day.”
Bokuto grins, so wide it looks like his face will split with it. “Good,” he says. “I think we’re really alike, Sakkun! And I like playing with you. I think you make me a better player. And you’re fun to hang out with! And I like running with you! So I think we should be friends, if you want to.”
“Ok,” Kiyoomi says. The ache in his chest doesn’t disappear, but it fades, just a little bit. Bokuto smiles at him, so genuine he doesn't know what to do with it besides keep running, and it fades a little more. “Friends.”