Chapter Text
The Karasuno Boys’ Volleyball Team was crazy. That much Keishin was sure of from the first moment he walked into the gym. Actually, scratch that. Teenagers were crazy, and he saw these kids every day at the Sakanoshita Store, bouncing between the aisles with their boundless energy and blusterous conversation. He knew they were wild. He’d just never had to address it for more than a few minutes.
If there was anything else he was sure of, it was this: the Karasuno boys’ volleyball team was misleading. He wasn’t fully aware of what he subconsciously expected from them, but it was the opposite of what he found. For one thing, their libero and ace bristled with bitterness. After he all but forced them onto the court, they stood at ends, staring each other down like they were engaging in some form of psychic debate. For another, their third-year setter (who greeted Shimada, with some level of pleasant surprise, like an acquaintance) went on a spiel about willingly ( willingly and insistently ) stepping down for a first year. Then, of course, there was the first-year duo with their creepy freak quick and constant bickering beside it.
They didn’t stop baffling him after that first day. Some part of him doubted they ever would. While the rowdier of their bunch certainly drew the most of his attention, the rest of them didn’t escape his observation. Especially not when they took up as much room as the ace.
It wasn’t that he tried to. The libero and the little orange one took up plenty of space through sheer will. The ace, though? It seemed to Keishin that he was trying to slip into the background, to make himself smaller if not in person then in presence. For all his tough looks and the whispers that followed him, he was incredibly reserved and almost laughably jumpy.
Almost.
The captain and vice-captain (who, for the most part, were a blessed stability in the mess that was the Karasuno boys’ volleyball team) assured him that this was typical: in all the time they’d known him, the ace had always been a bumbling bundle of nerves. Takeda, too, attested to the normality of his shyness. Keishin figured he would get used to it.
What happened instead, however, was him becoming increasingly aware of how the ace (Azumane, he reminded himself, he should try to learn these names even if he would be with them for only a short time) seemed to become more anxious by the day. When he brought it up to Takeda, the man hummed and agreed to keep an eye out, but thus far seemed only as concerned as he had always been for the boy.
Today he was distracted. When Keishin barked at him about it from his vantage point at the side of the gym, it seemed to only heighten his anxiety. Keishin could see it, building up in his shoulders, overspilling through his hands. His hair was disheveled. Even though it was tied back, he kept bringing a hand up to it, brushing over it or running through it until it hit the base of his bun. That in itself wouldn’t raise too many bells, but he was avoiding the first years too. It wasn’t noticeable enough for the captain to have called him out on it, but Keishin saw the looks he and the vice-captain kept shooting each other and the ace interchangeably.
Interfering, he rationalized, would likely only freak him out more, so Keishin pulled the vice-captain (Sugawara, a small voice in his mind insisted; names, names) to the side and instructed him to find the root of the issue if he had time. He trusted him to take care of it, most obviously because he was close to Azumane and therefore better at confronting him about any issues, but secondarily because in the few days he’d known him, he had proven to be incredibly responsible for his age.
Maybe Keishin was just saying that because in his day (no, he was far too young to be saying that already) he’d taken advantage of every opportunity to enjoy his carefree youth.
He planned to leave it at that. In his limited experience with teenagers (which stopped at his own memories, his family’s irritating recollection of raising him and his cousins, and some of his friends’ occasional gripes about younger siblings or high schoolers they interacted with at work), it was easier to let them approach each other with questions about minor issues. There was more trust when one was on the same level as the other person in the conversation.
As he was arriving at the Sakanoshita Shop, however, begrudgingly preparing for the tornado that was the volleyball club to rush through for evening snacks or dinners, he spotted Azumane down the road, wandering far ahead of the rest of them, some of whom he was sure were probably still in the club room. He supposed it wasn’t entirely shocking that he was there. What made Keishin do a double take was the fact that his hair, always tied up in its seemingly effortless bun, was falling freely around his shoulders. He had a chunk of it in his hands, staring at it like it owed him money. As he approached the lights of the shop, however, he glanced up and, upon locking eyes with Keishin, promptly jumped back, stumbling over himself for a moment like a young deer. Keishin raised a silent eyebrow at him as he righted himself and entered the store, still subconsciously grabbing at the ends of his hair with one hand.
“Ya got a problem?,” he asked as casually as he could, reaching into a pocket to pull out his lighter and a cigarette. Azumane, absolute unit that he was, almost shook, hands waving around nervously even though his arms were pulled tight to him.
“N-no, sir, of course not!” He continued to blabber on, constant stream of words sending Keishin’s head spinning. It took him an embarrassing amount of time to realize his mistake.
“Kid.” The mutterings of the ace stopped abruptly as he snapped his jaw shut, watching Keishin intently. “I was being genuine. You’ve been distracted at practice. If y’have a problem, just ask. I’m no Takeda, but I ain’t useless either.”
He shouldn’t have been put off by the amazed, puzzled expression Azumane hit him with. “You’d… even if it doesn’t have to do with practice?”
Keishin shrugged. “It’s affecting you during practice. You’d do better with whatever it is gone.”
Azumane stood in the entrance, shuffling around, thinking hard about whatever it was that had him so preoccupied but saying nothing. Keishin shrugged again and returned to his seat behind the counter (it felt strange to not have been in it for most of the afternoon, he had to admit). The kid would tell him or he wouldn’t, he couldn’t force that.
“What… what did you think when you first saw me?” He was staring holes into his shoes when Keishin glanced up again. If anyone else were in the store he wouldn’t be entirely sure it was Azumane who had spoken. He took another draw of his cigarette as he considered the question.
“I was mostly focusing on how you weren’t ready for practice yet despite everyone else being warmed up by then. Noted your height too, of course. That’s about it until you started playing.” That wasn’t the entire truth. His standoff with the libero piqued Keishin’s attention, but he didn’t need to know that.
“You…” he shuffled around some more, fidgeting. “You didn’t think I look like a delinquent, or a criminal, or a college student?”
Keishin leaned back, inspecting Azumane’s face. “Well, if I didn’t know you you wouldn’t strike me as a highschooler, but you’re too high strung to be a delinquent.” The kid’s face went pink at the observation, but he didn’t jump back into his anxious spiral or half-heartedly try to defend himself like Keishin had seen him do over the past few days. Instead, he deflated, fingers meshing together and untangling in a stilted loop.
“The first years are scared of me. Not on the team—not just on the team. Most of the second years are nervous too, and people on the street, and… everyone, I guess.” He took a deep, shuddering breath, and Keishin leant back in his chair, waiting.
“I can feel them watching me, and I can see how they avoid me, and I hear the rumors that I’m some thug or minor crimelord, that I’ve been held back, that I– I sell drugs or run gambling rings or–or a million things.” His hair covered his face in chunks as he spoke and he didn’t bother to push it back, hands pressed against his chest. “I hate it. I hate that I– I make people uncomfortable and scared by just existing, and I get sick thinking about everything they think about me, and I– I don’t want to cut my hair, or I don’t think I do, I didn’t, but I can feel eyes on me all the time and it just, it would be easier, and maybe… I don’t know.” He trailed off with a shallow sigh, still staring at the floor. Keishin took one last drag from the stub that was his cigarette and put it out in the ashtray, a move as familiar to him as breathing. He leaned his elbows against the counter.
“Why did you grow your hair out originally?”
Azumane was quiet for a moment. “I thought it was cool. I thought it was… wild. That if I looked cooler and more carefree than I was, I might… trick myself, I guess, into being that person. It was… a confidence booster, I suppose.”
“And do you still feel confident with it?”
There was a longer pause this time, another couple seconds of deep breathing. “I don’t know. I can feel everyone watching me, noticing me, all the time. I– I like my hair. I love it. But it’s too much, all the eyes, all the rumors, so… I don’t know anymore. It feels wrong to cut it. It feels wrong to keep it. It’s just… it’s complicated.”
“Most things are,” Keishin mused. Then, with a small smirk, he added, “I’d tell you to ignore what everyone says and just be you or whatever, but I have a feeling you’ve heard that before.”
Azumane huffed a small laugh. “That’s exactly what Yuu says. Suga, too, sort of. I don’t think they get it.”
Keishin could hear, beyond the doors, the telltale scuffling of the ridiculous first year duo. He pressed on.
“You ever thought about counseling?”
That managed to raise Azumane’s gaze off the floor. “Like– like therapy? I– I don’t need something like that, I’m not… I don’t know, I think that’s extreme.”
“There’s no one reason to get counseling. It sounds to me like you’re pretty anxious and I, for one, am not equipped to deal with that. I can listen, but I gotta be honest, kid, I’m not always the best at handling my own anxieties.” He paused for a moment, running his tongue over his teeth in thought. “You should talk to Takeda. He seems to be good with things like these. I’m sure he can help you set up meetings with a school counselor, or give you his own ears. You can talk to me, of course,” he was quick to assure, “but I think he might have more answers that you’re looking for.” He stood, then, stretching his back, and ambled over to where the kid stood.
“The way I see it, ya got two options here,” he said as he went. “You can cut your hair, conform, hope people stop making assumptions about you because you look how they think you should now. It might lower your anxieties, but you’ll probably miss your style and there’s a chance people will stick with their established ideas of you. Or you can keep going. Dress however you damn well please, do what you want, and figure out how to manage your anxieties. Find ways to make them affect you less. Regain that confidence that got you here in the first place. People will still stare, still talk. You can’t change that. You’d only be able to work on your reaction to it.” He stopped in front of Azumane, rolling on his heels slightly. Azumane was silent for a moment. The good-natured (was it?) bickering outside grew closer.
“Usually when people say that there’s an obvious option,” Azumane noted with a waver in his voice. “But… there doesn’t sound like a correct choice.”
“Most of the time, you’ll find there aren’t wrong or right choices. There’s just choices and what you decide to do after you’ve made them.”
Azumane sighed. “Why does it have to be so difficult?”
Keishin laughed, short and rough. “That’s life, kid. Nothing’s ever as simple as you think it should be.” He leaned back on his right foot, turned a quarter, stared out the window of the shop at the dark street beyond.
“You’ll never get everyone to stop judging you. There will always be someone somewhere who finds a reason to think poorly of you. You can’t control that, no matter what you change about your life. You have to find ways to live with it. Life is choices. Millions of them, all the time. Some of them change you forever, but not as many as you think. Hair grows back. People move on. Things happen. Opportunities reemerge. But you can’t plant your feet at the crossroads and refuse to make a decision just because you can’t see what the easier road is.”
He glanced back at Azumane. The boy had turned to stare out the window with him, brows furrowed with the pressure of the tumbling in his brain.
“Talk to Takeda,” Keishin told him again. “Not just for this. I think it can only help you to try and learn how to deal with,” he gestured vaguely, “everything.” He shuffled back to the register just as the blabbering first year duo pushed each other through the doors, already arguing again about who got there first. They turned, freakishly in sync, to Azumane, demanding to know who he saw step through the threshold first. He jumped, already back to his placating, peaceable (if a little flighty) chatter. It didn’t take long for the rest of the team to come filing in in twos and threes, filling the shop with boisterous babble and unruly laughter. Keishin watched them passively as they found their snacks or dinners and loitered around for whoever they were walking home with to finish their perusing.
Teenagers, he mused as the last of them filed out and he could finally lock up the shop. Annoying.
(Endearing, he didn’t let himself think.)
When Takeda came to him the next day grinning over his ‘excellent work encouraging Azumane outside of practice’ and ‘care for his athletes’, he brushed him off with a huff. He couldn’t have his ace be a bumbling bunch of nerves if they were to beat Nekoma.
(And if he asked Shimada about why the vice-captain knew him—a regular at the Shimada Mart, apparently, every other Saturday with few exceptions, always alone, always paying for a full family’s worth of groceries, since he was in middle school—or watched the frustrated tension of the first year setter’s brow when he tried to talk to his teammates with a cautious eye, that was his prerogative. If he stared through the window of the shop until every last figure had dipped into the distance, nobody had to know. This was temporary, after all.)
(This was temporary.)