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minus nine months
It’s a slow summer, the type that blurs daylight when one tries to trace the passing of time. Like smoke dissipating into a humid sky, sunrise and sunset stretch into yesterdays and tomorrows and todays, tripping memory to skip an afternoon, an evening, or a blue hour hidden by the morning.
So when Kuroo says, “but we’ve already been to Ueno Zoo,” Kenma does not reply for several minutes. His mind flashes through several scenes: pandas rolling over each other, Kuroo using sign language at gorillas, the smell of manure and hay. Has it been a month? Or a half a year? Did they go the day after he bought Persona 4? Could it be a year then?
“Ah,” he answers, to fill in the silence. Pausing the game, he leans back, leaving the suspect with her face in her hands (‘I was the one who killed him,’ would hopefully be her next line). Their carriage is rocking softly, causing the handles to sway in tandem, colour already thinning in areas where people had gripped too tightly, too often.
Kuroo leans forward to rest an elbow on his knee, face turned towards him. “Final Fantasy 3. I remember you riding a chocobo around the edge of world.” His finger traces circles in the air.
Final Fantasy 3. Two years ago, before I started high school.
His eyes must’ve widened because Kuroo grinned.
It might just be how the morning sunlight shifts but all of a sudden, Kenma realises that Kuroo has grown, face longer than the one in his memory, voice deeper, even the atmosphere which he carried, older. In the quietude of the morning, the sound of his heartbeat is embarassingly loud. He shifts his gaze away.
How did I not notice?
Outside, beyond the whispy mirage of the skyline, blue is folding into red in the east. Their train is headed west and for a moment, Kenma plays with the dream that they are racing against the dawn.
Only yesterday it seems. Some days feel like it was only yesterday.
So fast.
Time passes too fast.
“Kenma?”
He hunches over. On his screen, the woman is frozen in the same pose, her confession, her movements, her time, withheld until he presses a button. He leaves her be for a little longer, leaning against Kuroo’s shoulder. “Could we go again? To the zoo?” he asks.
Kuroo shifts, and from the way he feels the muscle stretch, Kenma knows he is being observed. He closes his eyes and breathes out.
“Sure."
minus six months
It’s a blistering hot day for autumn and at this time of the day, the sun is right above them pelting down liquid fire. Summer is already a memory, recalled in a distorted progression of fading flashes. Kenma’s mind is currently filled with the shifting formation players across the net, the arc of a volleyball in flight and Kuroo’s voice as he intructs the team. They had lost a set to Fukurodani, again. Kenma ignores the sticky feeling of his shirt against his back as he turns away from Bokuto’s cheering and walks into the sweltering oven outside. He should’ve sat out of the last round. Facing against Akaashi always makes him put in too much effort.
“Aw man,” Taketora groans, foot prodding the steep incline, “I really don’t want to do this.”
Lev echoes his sentiments in a whine, “I’m going to get sunburnt.”
Yaku sighs and kicks Lev on the back of his knees, “Do it quickly then.”
Kuroo leans forward, “Don’t want Karasuno to see us hesitating hm?”
Although the grass on Shinzen’s hill is green, their tips are coarse and dry, scratching at Kenma’s knees when he falls at the top to catch his breath. The entire team is panting heavily. It feels like he’s swimming in a simmering pot; the heat is suffocating him, blurring his sight at the edges. Lev is already skipping back down when Kenma sidles into the shade of a wide tree.
“Ha -“ Kuroo pants, wiping his face with the edge of his shirt, “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” he mutters, curling into himself to reduce the amount of exposed skin, “3 seconds.”
“One.” Kuroo holds out a finger.
“No.”
When he does go back inside (after brushing grass off his clothes), he is immediately disappointed at the minute difference being indoors make. The gymasium is too big and the fans are too small and there are too many sweaty boys sweating into the same sweaty air.
Seeing Lev open his mouth in his direction, Kenma immediately makes a beeline for his water bottle in the opposite direction. He eyes the spaces along the wall until he finds a clean, unmarked portion of the floor where he settles himself down, knees pulled up so that he could rest his face upon them.
His phone is in his room and their next match is after lunch. Kenma fiddles with his shoelaces instead.
Across the court, Kuroo is goading Lev into receiving his serves.
“But I want to spike” Lev sloaches, almost shrinking down to Hinata’s height, maybe.
“It’s just a volleyball.”
Lev shakes his head, “Your serves are like, ICBMs from Russia to America.”
“Good practice,” Kuroo’s grin is feral as he hooks a finger into Lev’s collar, “Come on, let’s go to gym three.”
But you need to work on your jumping. Kenma thinks.
He understands a little more when he sees Sugawara spending breaktime setting ball after ball to Hinata at every height and every angle. There’s a bitter wind in his heart when Sugawara smiles and steps off the court.
Even so, he later motions Taketora to the left when he sees the foot of Ubugawa’s #5 shift outwards, the tell-tale forecast of a strike from the side. His consciously sets slower balls to Fukunaga because he knows the latter is working on his aim and he keeps an eye on Lev’s timing with his blocks. And interjects a word or two.
On the last day, he looks up from the un-asked-for plate of meat in his hands and looks at at the scene before him, taking in the scent of barbeque, the sight of Bokuto snatching meat from the tips of Kuroo’s chopsticks, of Lev being beaten to the ground by Yaku, of Hinata laughing with (at?) Kageyama, of everyone basking in the lethargy of a week well spent.
His thumb rubs the knuckle of his index finger, right at the place where a pause button would be if he was holding a console.
minus three months
“You improved a lot!” Kenma smiles, hands warm in his pockets. There’s a spring in his step that causes deep inprints in the snow as he walks beside Hinata, “That feint in the second set, remember that?”
“Mmm,” Hinata scratches the back of his head, “When the ace was in the vanguard and #6 was far back.”
“6 and 10. Both thought they had adapted to the quick spike and just when they expected one-“
“Phwaaaa!” Hinata tapped the air in front of him, “A feint!”
“From that height too. How high can you jump now?”
“Higher then Lev!” Hinata claims, leaping forwards to brush his fingers against the sky.
“Ah,” Kenma’s eyes glint, “Watch out. He’s a lot better at read blocking now.”
“Even so,” Hinata puffs out his chest, “I got a new move against blockers.”
Kenma leans forwards, “What is it?”
“I can — “
“Baka Hinata!” Kageyama throws his hand between them, “Shut it! Baka, Baka!”
Behind them, Sugawara’s laught trickles over the collective chatter of their teams, “Kageyama’s right, Nekoma are our opponents tomorrow.”
“Good try though,” Kuroo pops forward to pat Kenma on the shoulder.
Hinata looks between Kageyama and Sugawara and Kuroo and then at him, face utterly confused. Kenma ducks forward, letting his hair hide the slight curve of his lips. He does let out a laugh, watching the air puff out before him, like a solitary, floating cloud.
Tokyo’s sunsets are a gradient of lilac shadows and burning sky. The space around them is cool, obscured from the sun by the rows of houses and alleyways and neighbourhood walls. When he looks up, he sees the frosted rooftops tinted golden by the drooping light. When he looks forward, he sees Hinata, the boy he first met one afternoon in Miyagi. He sees the new confidence in his steps, recalls the evolution of the adaptable quick strike and traces the improving quality of his midair decisions.
When he looks back he sees Kuroo, whose growth slipped through his memory like water. Kenma watches how he saunters amidst the Karasuno and Nekoma, joking with Daichi, jeering at Lev, prodding Yaku.
The long shadows creep onto Kenma like a weight and he swallows, tongue heavy in his mouth. He wants to stare until this moment is imprinted in his mind, able to be relived on a rainy day, or for a photo taken, untouchable by time. Then perhaps he would print it out and write on the back:
Kuroo Tetsurou at 18.
He turns around before someone notices his staring.
the month, the day
When does the dinner finish?
Almost, Nekomata-sensei is giving his speech - Yaku says hi. Where are you?
The usual.
Like willows, the cherry blossom branches drape across the Kanda River, spilling petals upon its surface. The timing of the first bloom was punctual this year, so his newsfeed is drowning in hundreds of photos, taken from similar angles inside similar frames with differing faces. There were smiles, there were tears, and there was a lot of cameras to immortalise them.
Kenma had easily found Kuroo (or his hair) in the gigantic auditorium during the ceremony, surrounded by indecifeable chatter and the excitement of his classmates. He knows Kuroo is still tune deaf by the way his neighbours lean away during the national anthem; he also knows when Kuroo starts lip-syncing by the way their postures gradually straighten by the beginning of the city song.
Now it is evening, with the last of the conversations sinking into the hours he had left behind. Slumping across the tall railing, Kenma watches the wavering reflection of streetlights on the dark water. Occasionally a train roars from the opposite side, bright lights illuminating the commuters inside with stark clarity, like a stage in a dimmed theatre. Resting his head on one arm, he looks up to observe in the brief seconds that they pass, the lives that he will never live.
He catches a suited man asleep on his feet, a school girl checking the hem of her skirt. There’s a face bowed towards a light novel, and another stretching their arms with the handrails.
Which one of those will Kuroo be?
(Not the school girl, he smiles to himself)
Under the lightest breath, he hums the song which the third years had sung as their graduation song, standing before the entire school: the teachers and students which have supported them through these years. Unbidden, the lyrics roll into his mind.
蛍の光、窓の雪、 Light of fireflies, snow by the window,
書読む月日、重ねつゝ。 Time spent reading under sun and moon.
何時しか年も、すぎの戸を、 Like this years pass without our notice,
開けてぞ今朝は、別れ行く Until today, when at dawn, we part.
“Catchy isn’t it?”
Kenma spins around. Kuroo is there, dressed in a western suit. It’s unfitted, loose at the ankles and tight at the shoulders but it stops the breath in his throat like a tsunami pulling water from the shore. And this was once the boy who ran around the backyard in underwear.
His mouth opens to speak, but he succeeds in only sucking in cool air, it slides down like ice and when it settles in his lungs, he shivers.
“Hey,” Kuroo switches his weight to his left foot “What are you thinking about?”
You. Kenma looks away, back out to the river, the lights, the railway tracks, and does not answer.
Nudging the pavement with the tip of his shoe, Kuroo turns towards the road, “Let’s go home yeah?”
Home. Kenma blinks. Together. Slowly, he extricates himself from the railing and makes his way to Kuroo’s side. We always go home together.
Walking next to Kuroo immediately ushers a wave of warm familiarity over him. Although life is not a game that could not be paused or replayed, Kuroo is a character that has stayed, and is not intending to go. The night is dark but their way is well lighted and well worn into memory. He nudges the tip of his index finger into Kuroo’s hand, which immediately closes over it in determined gentleness. They walk like this for several minutes, by the side of the river which curves and narrows with every step, covered by a canopy of swaying blossoms and listening to the sounds of a city falling asleep.
“Are you free tomorrow?” Kenma asks, voice softer than he intended.
“Yep,” Kuroo answers, “And the day after that, and every day afterwards until university. Why?”
Kenma looks up, “Uemo Zoo?”
“Again?” Kuroo raises an eyebrow, but there’s a gleam in his eye.
“I heard they have wildcats now,” Kenma suggests, looking forwards.
“Sure."
At midnight in the stillness of his room, the presence of the unspoken goodbye that had grown throughout the year dissipates. As his consciousness drifts, Kenma smiles, realising that it had not so much been meant for a person, but a year that had been good to him.