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Under 12’s volleyball is mixed. Toshiko hadn’t even noticed, really, until she turned 11 and something strange happened to the other kids. More and more, she noticed, the boys started to resent her. When the boys played setter, they tended not to set to the girls, even though Osaka was the tallest on the team and had the meanest spike by far.
Her grandmother says, “they’re just jealous you’re better than them, that a girl is better than them”, which feels true because she is better than all of them. It’s just a fact. But when she repeats those words to the coach, she doesn’t agree.
“That’s a very arrogant thing to say Toshiko, it’s certainly not good sportsmanship!”
She doesn’t know why not setting as much to the girls isn’t considered good sportsmanship. Or why saying she’s better than the others isn’t, it’s not like they don’t do it in school. Every year they publish the class rankings and give out awards for best English student, and maths student, and literature student, all things she’s never won because there are people better than her.
But for some reason, the same isn’t applicable to volleyball, the one area Toshiko actually excels in.
The coach doesn’t appreciate her reasoning, and she finds herself on the sidelines for the rest of the match, only coming in at the end as an outside hitter. She watches her line shot kiss the edge of the court; it’s the sharpest she’s ever gotten it, and it feels completely within her control. The boy opposite her huffs behind the net and she lets a grin overtake her face.
At the end of the day, the strongest win, regardless of who they are and where they play.
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Toshiko can’t remember a time in her life that has gone untouched by volleyball. Sometimes, when it was raining, and Toshiko could not convince her to go outside and practice anyway, Toshiko’s grandmother would pull out the family albums and she would see herself as a baby, folded around Misao’s volleyball. Herself, at two years old rolling it around in the background of a photo of Misao’s first day of the new school year. Herself at 5, wearing a mini JNT jersey, clutching one and frowning into the camera at the playground.
It’s like an extra limb.
She remembers at school trying to talk to the other children about it. The boys tended to be the most receptive when they heard it was a sport, but then less so when they realised it was volleyball. And no-one could answer her question of what their favourite player was; even when Toshiko would answer in full, to show them their options, by listing all of the members of the last Olympic women’s national team in order of how good Toshiko thought they were.
People mainly just walked away but Toshiko liked to finish her list out loud anyway, even if no-one was listening.
And after dinner, when she wasn’t allowed to practice because it would mess with her digestion, she would sit and watch the most recent match she could get her hands on, men’s, women’s, division 1, 2, 3. Or if it was off season she would go back and watch the Olympic matches, all the different countries this time, and pick a different player to focus on. Her parents didn’t like it if they arrived home in time to catch her watching the same match as before, but her grandma always waved it off.
“Better than the crap they’re showing on tv these days anyway”
And Toshiko couldn’t help but agree. Nothing could possibly be better than this.
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At school when they had that weird unscheduled time where they were supposed to learn about life or their bodies or someone else’s religion, they had occasionally talked about their future careers. Toshiko had always said V1 league indoor volleyball player.
Every year, teachers had had a gripe with it.
“That isn’t really a good career choice for girls Toshiko, how about something more sensible?”
“Oh, women don’t really play sports professionally Toshiko, that’s just a hobby”
“How about a volleyball coach? Wouldn’t you like to work with kids?”
Toshiko almost always had to be picked up from school early on those days, too frustrated not to lash out. Her grandmother would sigh and give her a talking to, even though Toshiko knew she disagreed with the teachers too.
She’s gotten better at that sort of thing, over the years, at reigning it in and then letting it all spill out during practice, energy and frustration filtered precisely through the unmatched satisfaction of watching the ball do exactly what you wanted it to. It was good to be passionate about sports, it was allowed.
And if she went overboard, no matter, she just had to get good enough that it didn’t matter.
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Misao quitting volleyball feels like when Toshiko is on the receiving end of a kill block at the other team’s match point. Like everything around her is about to slip through her fingers.
Misao is at that age where he starts shouting at the mildest of things, usually Toshiko, and where he sits on his phone all day. He hasn’t wanted to play with Toshiko in a long while. Sometimes, he’ll still sit with her if she’s watching an important match, like the Olympics or the world championships or the Asian games, and Toshiko will think, for a second, that she might see him tomorrow with his gym bag in tow on the way to school. But it never happens.
Her grandmother says that volleyball isn’t everyone’s path and that sometimes people play it just for fun or exercise or because they need to pick a club and that was the only one that had spaces left. Toshiko thinks that that’s obvious because everyone she’s ever met has been unable to match her enthusiasm for the sport, and if you want to become a professional player you can’t just half-ass it. But it feels different with Misao, like now there’s a wall between them that Toshiko doesn’t know how to climb and Misao doesn’t seem to want to look over.
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When she’s 8 and grandma is taking her and Misao to Tokyo for the day, Toshiko spots the outside hitter for the NEC Red Rockets, Miyuku Takahashi, in a 7-11. Misao is off buying a drink pouch and an ice cup because he’s 14 and he didn’t really want to leave his room, let alone come to Tokyo, so Toshiko and her grandma are waiting by the counter for him to get a treat as a compromise. Whatever that means. She can’t bring herself to care all too much, now that it’s led to this. Toshiko’s never met a professional volleyball player in person before and the feeling of excitement rises so sharp and fast from her stomach to her lungs that she goes completely still, wordless, hands gripping her grandmother’s arm so tightly the skin around her grip goes a pale yellow-white.
“Would you like her autograph?”
Toshiko fidgets where she stands, a little dazed, and nods bigger and faster than she’s ever nodded before. They have a map of Tokyo, and her grandmother unfolds it a little as she drags them to approach her.
She’s 170cm. She won best spiker in the Asia championships, best server last year, best receiver last year, AND MVP last year. She’s Kageyama’s dream to play with.
“What’s your name sweetie?”, her face is smiling and friendly even though she towers over Toshiko. Toshiko feels the blood rush to her face and can’t open her mouth. She tugs lightly on her grandma’s arm and knows immediately that she understands.
“Kageyama Toshiko. She plays volleyball too, I don’t think you could be meeting a bigger fan her age. She’s probably watched your matches more than your coach has”. Grandma says all this with a laugh because she’s good at people, that’s why she’s a coach. Toshiko isn’t good with people, but it doesn’t matter because she wants to be a player anyway, so all she needs to get good at is volleyball.
“Ah, I’m flattered. I usually don’t get recognised in public at all. It makes me so happy to know girls like you are watching! I hope you stick at it!”
And that unlocks something in her.
“I’m going to play as much as possible!”, it’s a little loud for an inside place, she realises after she says it, but it had come so fast and powerful to her tongue that she’d barely been able to shape her mouth to get the words out. It’s a truth so fundamental that even speaking it makes her feel something settle deep and heavy within her.
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“Aren’t you lonely?”, her mother asks.
Toshiko, primarily, is taken care of by her grandmother since both her parents spend long stretches of time abroad, working. She knows her mother had been at home more when Misao was young, but she’d returned to work when Toshiko was around two, so she’s more like an aunt to her at this point.
Toshiko’s setting back and forth with her grandmother as a cool down, occasionally changing to bump the ball when she feels like it. It’s simple and low effort enough that she can easily hold a conversation.
“No, I’m with grandma”
Her mother sighs and Toshiko feels a tightness overtake her stomach.
“I just haven’t heard you mention any friends”
Toshiko’s heard this before, at every parents’ evening she’s ever had. Concerns about her social development, about her roughhousing, about her deliberate obtuseness and too-loud volume and aggressive tone and lack of focus. It’s pointless because no-one ever does anything and so it’s just an hour of teachers complaining about Toshiko and then a silent car ride home before an evening of setting drills in bed.
But her mother has never been to one of those meetings, so how would she know?
“I don’t need any friends, they can’t keep up anyway”, no-one wants to talk about volleyball as much as she does, not even the people on her team, and none of the girls want to wrestle with her or race her across the playground.
“Toshiko!”, her mother shouts sharply, at the same time as her grandmother says “Toshiko…”, firmly.
She lets out an annoyed huff of breath and sets with a bit too much power, The volleyball hits the grass off to the side with a sad thud and her grandmother straightens up. That’s the end of practicing then.
She shakes out her hands just to have somewhere to put the energy. “I’m going to shower”, she says, and tries not to stomp as she walks back to the house.
She isn’t lonely. She’s too busy to be lonely. She watches Cuba beat China to take gold in Atlanta, 1996, with the volume low, whilst the muffled sounds of a tense conversation between her parents and grandmother creep through the walls.
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Oikawa is amazing. Everything Toshiko has even so much as thought about learning Oikawa can already do. Toshiko gets goosebumps at the heavy thud of the volleyball on the floor after she serves. Her form is straight and perfectly balanced, and she can sync up with almost anyone on the team, even when they jump inconsistently.
Oikawa also doesn’t seem to like Toshiko.
It comes to a head when she tries to hit her, and Iwaizumi has to intervene. Even though no contact actually occurs, Toshiko bounces it around in her head all night as she walks home. It makes her feel itchy and sticky inside, and she grips the strap of her bag for the whole journey.
It’s one of the rare moods where she doesn’t think playing volleyball will make it better. One of the moods where her words run dry, and she can’t even bring herself to nod or shake her head. Instead, she wants to get home and curl up on her bed, under the covers, and just go to sleep until tomorrow.
Her grandma just hugs her and sends her on up to her room and Toshiko finds herself endlessly grateful.
Afterwards, she notices how weird Oikawa’s always been towards her. Almost like, perhaps, she hadn’t liked Toshiko from the very beginning and Toshiko simply hadn’t noticed. It makes her cheeks go red-hot when she thinks about it, makes her want to hit something, makes her suddenly feel so sick of herself.
When she thinks about it on her morning runs, her times are often whole minutes quicker.
She can’t avoid Oikawa, but she also can’t ask her questions anymore and can’t spend too long with Iwaizumi, even though she’s the best spiker on the team, unless she wants to draw Oikawa’s weird, taunting, attention. But she can watch her. Can hone in on the dimensions of her body and the mechanics of her movements and the spots on the court that her eyes flick to, and then recreate it all by herself in the Kitagawa Daichii gym or her garden or her bedroom, in the middle of the night.
She thinks that when she gets better, when her form begins to flow in a rough copy, Oikawa begins to hate her more.
She doesn’t care, though. Oikawa has a shitty personality and happens to be good at volleyball and that’s the only reason Toshiko ever admired her and anything she’s good at Toshiko will become better at.
She promises herself this.
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As she gets older, her body becomes stronger. She’s lean and muscular, and the women in her family have never been particularly curvaceous. It leaves her with a boxy frame and broad shoulders, to compliment her angular jaw. Her hands, at least, according to her mother, are slim and well-maintained, albeit calloused.
When she sits in the living room and tends to her fingernails and the skin around them (moisturiser, nail clipper, nail file, cuticle pusher) and her mother is home to see, she’ll sometimes remark, “it’s like having a real girl when you do this Toshiko”.
Toshiko doesn’t know why she’s a real girl when she tends to her hands but not when she uses them to set, but she doesn’t question it. People have a lot of stupid ideas about girls and sports and hair and stuff. Toshiko just ignores it and gets better. Some of the girls on the team tie up their hair and serve sharp and mean and block calculated and cruel and then, when practice is over, let their hair down and touch up their lip gloss and giggle and smile politely and walk softly. It doesn’t make them any worse at volleyball, Toshiko thinks, and they’re girls in both situations, otherwise it wouldn’t be called the girls’ volleyball team.
Toshiko herself, sees no value in being different on and off the court, with the exception of her hair, even if her mother might prefer her to be.
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Her outfit for grandma’s funeral is one she’s never worn before because all of her clothes, aside from her school uniform, are clothes you can exercise in. The fabric is rough and stiff and it constrains Toshiko in a way she feels uniquely unused to. She tugs the collar of her dress away from her skin.
The room feels a little like it’s melting, like all the sounds and colours are blending into each other and falling into her body, into a new gaping chasm that’s appeared in her lungs.
When her grandmother died, Toshiko had asked her mother, “who will practice with me now?”. Her mother had shouted then, uncharacteristic. Had asked Toshiko why she had to make everything about herself. Told her that her grandmother had just died and all she could think about was volleyball. And Toshiko had wanted to say, but we always played volleyball together, and, I’m sorry, and, she was the only one that ever understood, and, she loved me.
Instead, her words got swallowed up in her throat, and her face went weird, and everything she was thinking and feeling travelled out into the peripheries of her body, so she ran up to her room and slammed her door and punched her bed again and again and again and again and again and again and again.
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Something corrosive lives inside of Kageyama and it’s bubbling away her stomach and lungs to nothing. She feels sick but she can’t throw up. She feels hot and embarrassed. She feels like she’s high up on a roller-coaster, at the edge of a drop, and her seat barrier has come loose.
She feels white-hot, burning, anger.
She doesn’t go to school. And then she does, because they threaten to tell her high school about her poor attendance, and she knows she won’t get into Shiratorizawa but, still.
She doesn’t play volleyball. At lunch, or after school, or at home, for weeks.
She spends her evenings clutching at her indoor volleyball, eating a reheated, frozen, meal-prepped dinner, and watching the 2001 women’s V league competition.
Tonight, she watches the NEC Red Rockets lose three sets in a row to Takefuji Bamboo. The Red Rockets lose this match, the last of the competition, but they win the tournament overall. It feels painful, for both sides. Losing so quickly and cleanly, an overall victory feeling hollow and short. Winning so quickly and cleanly but knowing that it still wasn’t enough.
Toshiko wonders if that how her teammates felt after they refused to run for her toss.
She wonders if that’s how coach felt watching it happen.
She wonders how she could be such an idiot.
She wonders how everyone else couldn’t see it her way.
The next year Minako Onuki, the setter for the NEC Red Rockets, would go on to win best setter. She’d won best server the year of the match. Toshiko can’t help but let her eyes drift to her during matches.
She thinks of Oikawa.
It’s rare that Toshiko feels so utterly incompetent. So utterly alien that not even volleyball can take it away. She’s never had the sport she loves make her feel so bad before. Her body feels like it’s turned upside-and inside-out, like she might be ill or something.
She sniffs, even though her nose isn’t running and she isn’t crying, and brings the ball further up, to rest her chin on it.
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On the day before the first day of high school, Toshiko cuts her hair in the bathroom mirror. To get it even all the way round, you can’t cut in a straight line. Misao had told her that. The hair you bring forward from the back travels further than the hair at the front, so you have to cut less off of those hairs if you want them to all be the same length.
Toshiko cuts her hair every month so that it always sits just above her shoulders. At this length she can tie it back securely into a ponytail and the hair doesn’t bounce around when she jumps but it also isn’t spiky enough to irritate the back of her neck when she tilts her head back to set. And when she’s not playing volleyball and her hair is down, she can shake her head side to side and feel the strands hit her face in a way that’s pleasant but also looks a bit weird and so she shouldn’t really do it in front of other people.
She’s practiced by herself all summer and incorporated finger push-ups into her workout routine, she’d read online that they were good for finger strengthening. She’s had a few annoying moments in matches where the ball has grazed her fingertips but not properly hit the tips of her palms enough for her to make a decent toss and she’s keen to see if they’ll have an effect on her ball control in those moments. She thinks they might, based on her drills, but a match is always different to practice and it’s a lot easier to prepare for something when you know it’s coming.
She doesn’t think about the match.
Probably, once you’re in high school, people don’t follow middle school volleyball. It’s a whole separate system. Even Toshiko herself had gravitated towards professional volleyball matches whenever she had free time, and she likes volleyball more than anyone else she knows.
She shakes her head back and forth and watches as it settles in its perfect place again, and then sets about tidying up the bathroom.
She should really be going over her old notes in preparation for classes, but she feels weird and aching, like there’s a vacuum inside of her sucking in all of her organs. It makes the tips of her fingers tingle unpleasantly.
So, instead, she grabs her inside volleyball and holds it against her chest and watches Japan crush Thailand in the most recent Asian Games. She likes this game a lot because Japan win, which is always nice, and also because the first set ends in a brutal duel but the next two are finished in a flash. It’s like the long hike up a mountain, followed by jumping off. Difficulty and then easiness. There’s nothing she likes more than seeing a 25-17 score; it shows your opponents are good but you’re just that much better. A good match has bite to it. A long first set makes the other people on the team want to push themselves, and the second set usually becomes oil slick and seamless. Like everyone finally wants it as badly as Toshiko does.
When the match ends, she presses play again, and shits in her seat on the cushion to reach over and try and sort out her bag for the next day.
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When Shouko and Toshiko pull off their freak quick (mark two), in that first-year training camp practice match, Toshiko almost can’t contain herself. Sometimes, when she pulls off something difficult in a match, the energy flows through her calm and controlled and her brain works a million miles an hour but also in perfect silence. It feels like it covers the court in an even coating and lets her sense everything, even things she can’t see, as though the whole room is an extension of her body.
This is not one of those moments.
Instead, the energy that fills her body halts at the skin, some invisible barrier preventing it from spreading out and dissipating to a more manageable level. She lets out a noise that she can’t even begin to process and finds herself mirrored in Shouko’s reaction, their bodies at once loose and tense and vibrating.
Their arms find each other and Toshiko can’t tell where she’s grabbing Shouko and where Shouko is grabbing her. It feels like taking the first breath after a life underwater, that first sip of cold water after an excruciating running drill on a summer’s day.
And if Toshiko had the presence of mind to contemplate these feelings, if she wasn’t in the middle of a practice match they were losing after a full day of diving receive drills and hill runs, she would marvel at the fact that this feeling never got old. That the thrill of being matched in enthusiasm and joy and dedication and need, remained boundless and all-encompassing every time it was encountered.
But she had work to do, so she didn’t think any of this, and instead let the feeling wash over her and move her body, without interrogation.
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When coach pulls her aside to announce that she, Ennoshita, and the prospective captain (as yet unnamed, officially) have decided to offer her the position of vice-captain, if she wants it, it knocks the breath out of her.
Time and experience and Karasuno, and probably a touch of brain development, have both healed the lingering wounds of her last middle school match and changed her perspective on volleyball. It was an important lesson, she understands, perhaps delivered in one of the worst ways possible, but important, nonetheless.
She knows how to push her teammates in a constructive way now, at least she thinks she does; Tsukishima certainly wouldn’t let her get away with being tyrannical, even now. But the feeling of responsibility scares her, despite this. She knows she’s not good with people. That she’s a little weird and quiet and a bit too aggressive and unimaginably competitive. And even though she can ask how to adjust her sets and convey her strategies to others, she knows it isn’t butter-smooth like Oikawa, or charmingly cocky like Miya, or unflinchingly calm like Akaashi.
Coach takes her even further to the side and puts a hand on her shoulder. Her stance is cocked to one side, weight resting on one leg.
“You want to go professional right? You’re going to get scouted this year, it’s inevitable, you’ve already had a bit of interest from the under-18 national team, haven’t you?”
Toshiko nods.
“This’ll be good for you, good for scouters to see too. You’ve come a long way. You don’t play your games like you still have the same skill set you had in first year, do you?”
Toshiko shakes her head.
“Exactly! So, stop thinking you, as a person, are the same as you were two years ago! You’ve been working on your communication, you’re a phenomenal player, you’re tough enough to make the younger years fall in line, and you love volleyball… Am I wrong?”
Toshiko fidgets a little, something rising in her lungs.
“No”, she says.
“So don’t worry about if you’ll be able to do it, just ask yourself if you want to”
“I want to!”, Toshiko says, immediately, because she knows it’s true. She feels it inside of herself, something she’d forgotten in the comfort of Karasuno. That she wants to be normal. Maybe that’s the wrong way to phrase it but she can’t think of anything else that captures it.
“I want to”, she repeats, and Coach smiles and then pats her head.
“Good! Don’t tell anyone though, we’re going to announce it officially tomorrow”
“Right”, Toshiko says, and heads back towards the volleyball cart and a stretching Shouko, too wound up to go home now.
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At the end of middle school, Toshiko had been almost desperate to leave.
This time, it’s making her twitchy and irritable. Shouko, Yachi, Yamaguchi, and even Tsukishima, all together, make her feel like when she holds her indoor volleyball in between her chest and her thighs and puts an old match on the TV. And, she knows she’ll be ok with a new team, she has been at the national training camp, and on that one, memorable, occasion during summer camp where all the schools swapped players on the final afternoon.
But, still, she can’t help the anxiety that gnaws at her. Like what if they hate her, what if they can’t understand each other, or if she gets excited and energised and then turns around to see a sea of blank faces.
And Shouko’s moving to Brazil.
It’s not even to play indoor volleyball, but beach volleyball instead, which has different rules and different team sizes and a different court surface, so they can’t even compare scores or game results. Toshiko knows it’s so she can get better away from her, away from such a technical setter and reliable team. So that she can come back to stand, unassisted, on the linoleum. But Toshiko wants to say: “can’t you get better a little closer to me?”
They see each other everyday at volleyball practice and they walk home together, but they don’t hang out much before or after school. Now that volleyball practice will be gone, and there’ll be an ocean separating them, Toshiko wonders if Hinata might forget her.
It makes her guts clamp up, like she’s on her period or something.
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Visiting Shouko in Brazil is strange. Toshiko doesn’t like travelling abroad, the aeroplane makes her ears pop and the seats are cramped and the food is always bad. Then the heat, as she steps off the plane and it hits all at once like a suckerpunch, is unbearable.
But when she sees them all, standing there, Shouko with a horrible, gaudy sign, specifically and only for Tsukishima, just to piss her off, Toshiko feels a wobbly smile stretch over her face.
Shouko is taller, that much is obvious. Toshiko herself has stopped growing now, but Shouko doesn’t need to know that. Toshiko’s still taller anyway so she’s still winning so it doesn’t really matter.
Her skin is tanned. The sun has brought out freckles on her arms and collarbones. Toshiko can see them because she’s opted for a vest shirt, her wardrobe well-adapted to the weather and cultural norms of the country. Toshiko herself is in a white t-shirt, that she’s almost certain she’s sweating straight through at every contact point it has with her skin. Shouko had always been a little fairer than Toshiko, a little more delicate. Toshiko wants to compare their arms side by side and see if she’s more tanned that Toshiko now, compare the size of their forearms to see how much she’s bulked up, but she refrains.
She’s got earrings in, but no new piercings. They’re different to the ones she wore to school, small gold hoops that complement the copper undertones of her hair. Her hair is shorter as well, but Toshiko knew this. Shouko had complained about it making her sweat enough times that there really wasn’t any build up when they facetimed one day and she’d made the chop.
Privately, Toshiko thinks it suits her. The way the curls flick up around her jawline feels strangely captivating to Toshiko. She hasn’t grabbed Shouko’s hair like this before, she wonders if it will feel different-
“Why are you just standing there silently?”, Tsukishima asks, a disgusted look on her face, as always. It’s a shame her personality hasn’t changed.
“Shut up, it’s too hot and loud in here”, she replies, shoving into Tsukishima who promptly shoves back. They’re only spared from all out war by Yamaguchi worming her way in between them and pointedly asking Shouko about the way out of the airport.
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Toshiko has had the same haircut for as long as she can remember.
It’s a good haircut, or it was, at least, but now that she plays volleyball full-time, she’s starting to find it lacking. Something about the length of it bothers her, in a way that it didn’t used to. In class, she used to like the length, because of the way it fell against her face when she tilted her head down to write. But she doesn’t have class anymore, and she never will again, so, now, her hair spends most of its time up.
She doesn’t want it longer, so the only logical solution is to go shorter.
Many professional female athletes have short hair, so Toshiko picks the haircut of one of her favourite, now retired, players and shows it to her brother.
“Are you sure?”
Toshiko nods firmly, once.
And then that’s that.
She likes the way it looks. And it feels good to run her hands through it in a way that her long hair didn’t. Ushijima even compliments it, which is nice. Her own hair has remained the same since high school, short and ‘no-frills’, as Suga had once described.
She doesn’t think much of it, until she calls Shouko to compare training that week.
“KAGEYAMA!”
She shouts it loud and bright, making Toshiko jump as the sound of it blasts through her headphones. Shouko has a tendency to use her full last name whenever she’s taken by surprise. Toshiko didn’t do particularly well at school but she isn’t that stupid, so she asks, “is it my hair?”.
Shouko makes a number of indecipherable noises.
“What are you, a dog?”, Toshiko asks, just as Shouko’s roommate pops her head into the video frame. Shouko says something in Portuguese which Toshiko assumes is ‘come closer and have a look’ based on the way Paola walks forward and leans towards the screen. Toshiko feels bashful for a second. It’s strange to be the centre of this kind of attention.
“I’m not a zoo animal to show off to your friends you idiot!”
Paola makes a thumbs up gesture and then says delicious in Japanese, which does nothing but confuse Toshiko and cause Shouko to burst out laughing.
After she recovers, she tells Toshiko that she’s been teaching her small bits of Japanese at Paola’s request, in exchange for Paola’s help grammar checking any important messages or documents Shouko has to fill out. They’d gotten around to positive words but only for food, it turns out.
“But seriously, it actually looks cute ‘Yama”
“Whatever dumbass”, Toshiko says, even though she can feel herself tensing up and her cheeks flushing an embarrassing red. Shouko’s stupidly straightforward in her compliments, probably because she’s got no filter whatsoever in her tiny brain.
Toshiko is about to tell her this when Shouko speaks again.
“Hold on, this isn’t even in the group chat!”, and then all of a sudden Toshiko is getting the notification that Shouko’s screenshotted the call and then the message notification that she’s sent it to the chat.
[image sent]
[Shouko-loco] YAMA CUT HER HAIR EVERYBODY WAKE UP
[Hitoshi <3] It looks really nice Toshiko!
[Captain of our hearts] NO WAY KEIKO LITERALLY CUT HERS YESTERDAY ASDFJFJHLGDSKJF
[image sent]
[Tsukishima] Kageyama I am going to kill you
[Toshiko] shut up you loser
[Tsukishima] Wow a real zinger there, you really got me with that one
[Hitoshi <3] WOW Keiko a bob suits you so much!!!!!
[Shouko-loco] It’s like a Karen’s final form
[Tsukishima] HINATA I AM GOING TO KILL YOU
“You have to let me touch it when I come back to Japan”, Shouko says, as their conversation stretches past a reasonable time.
“What the hell? What kind of weirdo request is that?”, Toshiko says, even though she misses roughhousing with Shouko so badly it makes her stomach hurt.
“Didn’t you literally spend like three minutes messing up my hair when you came to Rio?”
“THAT WAS DIFFERENT YOU IDIOT”, Toshiko says, even though she knows it wasn’t.
“Stupid-yama”, Shouko says, but it comes out weird because she’s grinning through it. Toshiko feels something warm and trembling inside of her at the sight.
And the next morning, as she stretches during warm up, her mind drifts to that moment, unprompted.
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The Jackals vs Adlers match was basically a highschool reunion so, post-match, they promptly overtake the nearest izakaya.
Toshiko doesn’t drink, she doesn’t like the taste or the feeling it gives you, so she sips a lemonade alongside Ushijima. Shouko developed a taste for beer over in Brazil, apparently, so she’s nursing a pint of something that isn’t Asahi (the only beer Toshiko knows the name of) and chatting away to someone else.
It’s so noisy that it’s almost difficult to concentrate but Toshiko finds her eyes effortlessly drawn to the conversation Nicola and Shouko are having. Toshiko can’t quite figure out why it feels different to be quiet and listening to a conversation, now, than it did when she was twelve. Can’t quite figure out why it doesn’t hurt like it used to. Why it doesn’t make her have to leave early and press her volleyball tight to her chest in the living room, whilst she rewatches an old match.
“But I think I should totally get more than one point for winning this match, right Toshiko?”, Shouko angles her face towards her.
She doesn’t have to know the context to know that Shouko’s wrong.
“What the hell? Then I should definitely have gotten more than one point for the Olympics!”
Nicola giggles and Toshiko’s stomach flips, “I have to agree with Toshiko on this one, I’m afraid, Shouko”.
Toshiko always feels a little funny when Nicola speaks. It reminds her a little of how she felt about Oikawa, back before. How she wanted to impress her. Except this is like if Oikawa had liked her back and had said ‘good job Toshiko’ or ‘wow you really are something, it’s incredible’.
Toshiko had tried to ask Ushijima if she felt the same way but the other woman had just stared blankly at her.
Shouko sticks her tongue out at her, which Toshiko knows means she’s knows she’s wrong. She lets out a half-huff, half-laugh and sips her drink.
“Dumbass”
Shouko may have developed a taste for beer but it appears her alcohol tolerance hadn’t quite caught up. When the evening eventually fizzles out, at a respectable 10pm given that they’ve all played a full match today, Toshiko has to all but carry Shouko back to her flat.
Technically, the Black Jackals have group accommodation but Shouko had looked at her, eyes smug and grin sly, and taunted that Toshiko’s flat was probably like those reddit posts online where someone’s bedroom only had a mattress on the floor and one poster. Toshiko hadn’t seen any of those posts but she knew by Shouko’s tone that it was something that would cost her a point, so she’d demanded that she come round to see for herself.
And then she’d stuck up another poster on her wall, a Kurobe Aquafairies banner from 2015, just to be safe.
“I misssssed youuuuu, Yama ‘Yama”, Shouko slurs, as they make their way down the street, bumping into Toshiko periodically, unable to keep a straight line.
Toshiko feels something catch alight in her chest and it renders her momentarily breathless, “Yeah, whatever”, she huffs, looking away from Shouko’s pathetic form.
She can feel Shouko gearing up to complain, so she forces it out before she gets the chance, “I missed you too”. Shouko turns to her with a big wobbly smile and hugs her tight enough round the middle that Toshiko thinks she might throw up for a second.
“Fucking hell! Idiot!”, she says, and knees Shouko in the side to get her to detach, “You’ll be sleeping on the street if you kill me before we get to my flat”.
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Back when she’d first moved to Italy, alone, she’d found the nearest supermarket, then the nearest Asian supermarket, then the nearest park. She’d then rotated between those three locations, along with the gym the practiced in and her team’s accommodation building, for the first two months of her stay.
Shouko had squawked like a bird when Toshiko had told her that she hadn’t been to anywhere touristy. But she hadn’t gone to Italy because she wanted to see anything there, she’d gone to play volleyball, and as long as she could do that, then everything was fine by her.
But her teammates were friendly and persistent. She thinks there’s truth to the idea that Italians are more friendly than Japanese people. Almost half the team were ‘Shoukos’ and even the most reserved were at least ‘Yamaguchis’. There were no ‘Tsukishimas’ or ‘Toshikos’. Well, apart from Toshiko obviously.
So, they’d forced her into some tourism on their off-days.
Toshiko hadn’t really covered the roman empire at any stage in her education and some of the girls had gotten a kick out of giving her an educational tour, although the accuracy was often a point of debate. Toshiko didn’t mind either way, it’s not like Shouko would be able to tell if something was wrong, and she was the only person Toshiko was going to talk to about it.
In the Japanese national team and the Schweiden Adlers, there had been people Toshiko had already known, or at least was familiar with. She paid attention to international rankings, obviously, but less closely than she did to V league. So, when she accepted the offer to join Ali Roma, she’d felt something sick in her stomach.
It had made her serve hard and mean, in practice. A few times, even out of bounds, for the first time in a long time for her. She’d ignored the squirming feeling inside of her when she’d said yes to the offer, because it was an undeniably good opportunity, not the kind of thing that required a debate when you cared even a little about volleyball. And Toshiko cared a LOT about volleyball. But it was more than that, different teams had different play styles, even within the same sport, and something growing inside of Toshiko was itching for a change up.
“I think you could still get stronger here”, Ushijima had said, the only person on the team who had ruled out leaving Japan adamantly, when they had all asked each other in the comedown after a practice match one afternoon.
“Mm, but look what it did for Hinata”, Ushijima’s face twists into a grimace and her eyes squint, she’s developed more of a taste for strategy but Shouko’s style of playing is still so distant from her own that Toshiko thinks Ushijima almost can’t quite comprehend her.
She takes another sip of her drink and moves to sit down on the floor, “Yes but she’s hardly the norm”. Toshiko sits down too, even though she’s done stretching because Tsukishima had made fun of her for always looming over them in this way at the end of practice.
She goes to speak, but is interrupted by Ushijima again, “Although neither are you, I suppose”.
And instead of feeling the piercing hurt of separation, something else happens. Something settles inside of Toshiko and makes it easier to breathe.
And she thinks, yeah, we aren’t.
5 months later, during the Ali Roma beach trip, they play beach volleyball together. One of the girls, Alessia, records Toshiko face-planting on the sand after trying to dig a spike and manages to send it to Shouko, even though Toshiko’s whole phone is in Japanese, because they all know that she’d enjoy it.
After Shouko’s finished laughing at it and trying to convince Toshiko that this should mean that either she loses a point or Shouko gains one, she gives Toshiko a few tips on how to plant her feet in the sand.
Toshiko wins the rest of her rounds and Shouko suggests that his makes them break-even on the whole extra point thing.
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The stadium is filled with the noise of a crowd even though they’re far away from the actual action. The floor almost vibrates with the energy of it, with the sheer number of bodies packed into one area.
Toshiko has competed in the Olympics before.
People can say what they want about her intelligence, but she remembers that much. It had been everything to her. The air had been thick and the sounds all sharp and the colours bright. She’d had so much energy she’d had to shake it all out in the changing rooms but once she stepped out onto the court she’d felt it all settle down, like rain droplets running over her skin.
That year, they’d lost more than they’d won and had been cruelly knocked out by America early on, but it had been the first Olympics for many members of their team, and the energy of the competition, of the venue, had run like a livewire through them despite it.
But now, it feels different.
Shouko is bouncing off of the walls talking Bokuto’s ear off about everything she can see and Bokuto is chatting back, just as enthusiastically. Ushijima is quieter, which Toshiko sometimes prefers and sometimes doesn’t.
It’s her first Olympics with short hair, she thinks.
It's also her first time playing with Shouko, officially, in years.
Toshiko feels a tingling in her fingertips, like they’re itching to get started. She traces the hard lines of Shouko’s physique up and down. She knows how high she can hit, how fast she can serve, but she wants to see it, for some reason. She feels greedy. She wants to be the one to set to Shouko, to bring more than her best out of her, to egg her on until they’re both surpassing their limits to play a game that spills over into the realm of art.
She grabs onto Shouko’s shoulders from behind and shakes her a little.
And because they’re the same, because they starve in the same way, Shouko turns back to her and grins, sharp and dangerous. Toshiko feels her face echo it back, natural in the way it’s only ever been a scant handful of times.
“We’re gonna win ‘Yama-yama”, she says.
“Yeah”, Toshiko says, only because she can’t say – I already have.
.