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After Shiratorizawa, everything changes.
The world cracks open—just a little—letting in a light Kei doesn’t want.
Victory tastes sharp on his tongue, metallic like blood, and too bright in the gym lights. They won. They won. Because of him. Because of a block. Because—for once—he cared enough to try.
And Kageyama had seen it. Of course he had. He sees everything.
Then the training camps come, and with them, the cold. Kageyama now in Tokyo, training with Japan’s greatest players—Kei in Miyagi, playing with those who noticed him.
Kei returns with silent bruises and louder doubts. The youth camp wasn’t gentle. It stripped him raw—revealed the bones underneath his lazy smirks and half-hearted swings. It reminded him that standing still is still a choice, but it’s never a kind one.
And Kageyama, golden boy, comes back different too. More focused, sharper, though, not colder—Kageyama has never been cold, just unknowable, like a flame you can’t touch—but tighter. Like the world had narrowed into a line he’s determined to walk without faltering.
He starts tossing to Kei like he means it.
Not the obligatory sets, not the basic, clean, safe tosses he used to give him. No—these are crafted. Tailored. Too perfect. And Kei hates them, because each one asks something of him.
More.
Jump higher, swing faster, be better.
He doesn’t understand why. Kageyama doesn’t need him. Never has. Kageyama has Hinata, who devours the sky like it’s made for him. He has willing spikers lining up just to be fed. He could choose anyone. But he continues to toss, each set more than just the rhythm of their pumping hearts, but a challenge. A set that deems him worthy of something he hasn't earned.
Like he’s not just a middle blocker filling space.
Like he’s something worth shaping.
The sets change.
He doesn’t say anything about it at first. Just narrows his eyes and swings, hits, listens to the satisfying thwack of ball on floor. But it keeps happening, day after day.
Each toss tailored to his height, his reach, his rhythm.
They say: I know what you’re capable of. I see you. Don’t hide.
They say: You jumped for someone else. Do it for me.
And Kei wants to scream, because he doesn’t understand why.
Why would Kageyama, of all people, care whether he tries or not? That’s not how it works, not with someone like him.
Not with someone made of constellations and exactness and cruel precision, someone who does not ask if the world will meet him—only expects it to. Someone who looks at people like puzzles, like equations, like something to solve and refine and perfect.
Someone who sets like the universe is a machine and he holds the lever.
And Kei is not a machine. He is brittle-boned and blood-warm and full of slow, aching softness he doesn’t want anyone to see. He is sharp edges on the outside because he is nothing but tenderness beneath. He is sarcasm and distance because he has never once believed he was enough.
Not for this game, not for anyone, and especially not for him. So when Kageyama begins to set to him like he matters—like his hands are meant to hold up the sky just so Kei might learn to rise—it hurts. It hurts more than he knows what to do with. Because this isn’t about jumping anymore.
It isn’t about spiking, or timing, or proof. It’s not even about the point. It’s about Kageyama choosing him: every day, through every toss, and every far-too-high set. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like there’s no doubt. No hesitation. Like Kei isn’t just an option, but the one he wants.
And that thought—God, that thought—swells in his throat like a bruise, like a secret, like a scream he cannot let out.
Because it isn’t true, it can’t be. Because if Kageyama is setting to him, it’s because of capability, because of the stubbornness woven into every leather ball sent soaring his way. The sheer potential in the way he saw Kei jump for someone else and decided he wouldn’t be outdone.
Perhaps, a game, a fixation; anything but a choice. Not the sure, easy thing Kei wants it to be. Not him at all.
And still Kageyama tosses—like his hands don’t know how to stop, like Kei is a song stuck in his throat, like some part of him is always reaching through those cursed fingertips.
And Kei—stupid, cowardly Kei—keeps jumping.
Not because he wants to prove anything, most definitely not because he wants to meet Kageyama halfway, but because some part of him is selfish. Some part of him wants to feel what it’s like to be wanted, even if the wanting isn’t real. Even if the only thing Kageyama loves is the idea of dragging him higher.
Because when he jumps, when he times it just right, and the ball cracks through the air like a breaking dawn—he thinks, maybe this is what it feels like to be chosen: just for a second, for a semblance of a heartbeat.
Just long enough to pretend that the fire in Kageyama’s eyes is meant for him, not for victory.
That the arc of the ball is not a demand, but a gift; that the toss is not a test, but a tether; that maybe he is not being settled for through every set Kageyama sends his way.
But those are dangerous thoughts.
The kind of thoughts that whisper soft, seductive lies, coaxing him to dream of things he has no right to wish for. They taunt him with the warmth of something he’s never known—the kind of warmth that makes you feel like you might belong somewhere. Like you might not be just a piece of the puzzle, not just the block in the court, not just the silent observer of the world moving too fast.
He knows better than to believe in those thoughts, because they lead to something darker, something messier.
They lead to hope.
And Kei has learned the hard way that hope is the most dangerous thing of all. Hope is a fragile thing, something that can break apart in your hands without you even realizing it. It can shatter you from the inside out, leaving you with nothing but hollow pieces. Nothing but quiet emptiness. Nothing but the bitter taste of regret.
Hope is a luxury Kei can’t afford.
He’s built his world around certainty, around not wanting, around not needing anything. He’s fine, fine with how he is.
Detached.
Detached enough to keep everything at arm’s length, far enough to keep himself from feeling the weight of any emotion heavier than boredom.
But these thoughts—they gnaw at him. They slip into the cracks he’s worked so hard to conceal, filling the spaces with something that feels too big to ignore—too loud, too real. So he swallows them down, deep into his chest, where they lodge like stones, pressing against his ribs. He lets them rot on his tongue, letting their bitterness linger like a warning. He’ll be fine. He’s always fine. He doesn’t need anything more than what he’s already given.
He doesn’t need Kageyama to toss with more precision, to make him jump higher, to make him feel something deeper. He doesn’t need any of it. Instead, he does what he’s always done.
He keeps quiet. Keeps his silence, a shield against anything that might creep too close.
Keeps distant. Keeps the people who try to warm him at arm’s length, even as their touch burns. Even as their words hold more weight than he’s willing to admit.
He’ll stay here, in this cold corner, wrapped up in layers of indifference and distance, because it’s the only place he knows how to exist without the dull pressure of 'more' lying heavy on his chest.
He goes through the motions of the day, pretending—that the sets haven’t flown faster, that his legs haven’t gotten stronger, that he doesn’t jump even higher—because he can't decide which is worse: that Kageyama is trying to make him better, or that he already has.
And one day, when that perfect set flies through the air—beautiful and impossible and his—Kei will jump. He won’t think. He’ll just move. He’ll feel the rush of air in his lungs, the heat of his body leaping toward that ball, and in that moment, his whole world will be that one perfect arc of the ball in the sky. And as his body stretches upward, as his hands reach toward that impossible peak, something will catch in his throat—something fragile, something raw.
Will you stop tossing then? Will I stop being enough the moment I arrive?
Because maybe, that’s what Kageyama does.
He finds the stars—those people who can shine, those people who burn with potential—and he lights them up. He feeds them, makes them blaze so brightly that they outgrow him.
And maybe that’s what Kei is terrified of.
Terrified that the moment he finally lets himself shine, the moment he gives in to the pull of Kageyama’s beautiful hands, there will be nothing left.
That he will have reached the top, touched the sky, and when he looks down, there will be no one left to catch him, no one left to pull him back, no one left to love him. And he’ll fall.
He’ll fall—and there won’t be anyone there to stop him.
Because maybe, just maybe, Kageyama’s love isn’t about catching him when he falls.
Maybe it’s about making him fall, making him leap into something bigger than he ever thought he could handle.
It’s about pushing him beyond the lines he’s drawn in the sand, the walls that he’s carefully built around his heart to keep the world from getting too close. It’s about making Keirise—rise, not because he has to, but because it’s the only thing that makes sense in that moment. Because it’s what Kageyama’s sets do to him: they make him feel like something worth reaching for. They make him try—not for himself, not for the game, but for that subtle, unspoken thing in Kageyama’s eyes, in the pull of his hands that somehow never let him fall too far.
Kageyama isn’t trying to break him. He’s not trying to tear down the fortress Kei's so carefully cultivated over the years. No, he’s trying to teach him something Kei can’t teach himself. That he’s worth something. That he’s not just a block to fill a spot, not just a piece to the puzzle of Kageyama’s game. That he, in his raw, jagged imperfection, can be part of something bigger than the sum of his pieces.
That he can rise, even when he doesn’t believe he has the strength to.
But Kei, despite the truth he feels fluttering in the pit of his stomach, can’t bring himself to fully believe it, not yet. Not when the fear is so much louder than the pull of Kageyama’s hands. The fear that if he jumps too high, if he lets himself be too much, if he reaches the top and lets himself shine—there might not be anyone left to hold him.
He might fall, and there might be no one to catch him. No one to save him when the brightness fades, when the glory of the moment becomes too overwhelming, too much to hold onto. And it might be that the only thing he’ll have left is the empty space Kageyama leaves behind.
So, he jumps. He keeps jumping—keeps letting the ball soar higher and higher. Not because he wants to be caught, but because maybe, just maybe, the only way he can find out if he’s truly worthy of love, of this, is to keep reaching for it. Even if it’s just a sliver of the truth, a glimmer of the warmth Kageyama’s tossed his way.
He’ll keep jumping until he can no longer pretend that the fire in Kageyama’s eyes isn’t meant for him. Because he’s too far gone, too deep into this tangled web of wanting and fear to stop now.
He will continue to jump to every toss set with those rough, calloused, well-kept hands, until Kageyama makes it so Kei shines far too bright, or continues to move forward himeself.
Because that's what Kageyama does.
So Kei wonders, with every toss that arcs toward him—clean, perfect, insistent—
Why are you settling for me?