Chapter Text
Kai still thinks about her friends from long ago.
Her meek neighbor with hair reminiscent of moss, the smattering of freckles across his face always something she counted when they spoke. Quiet, shy. So much so, Kai continues to lose count of just how many she was beating someone up in their local park for even looking at him oddly. It was that rambunctious nature that separated them in the first place.
And the other one, a blonde so tall that Kai had pondered to Yamaguchi the first time she met him if he was really their age. Kai grew curious of the boy her freckled friend spoke so fondly of the day he apparently stood up for him against that damn group of booger-eating boys that just hadn’t gotten the message from Kai’s fist. Though his attitude was horrendous and his bitter words could and would rival hers, Kai remained eternally grateful.
They were around 12 the day they parted, or more accurately, the day Kai left.
Out of her control, naturally. She could never imagine ever leaving the boys she grew to rely on for most of her upbringing willingly, and she made that extremely clear the day her parents brought her into the living room with hushed words to confess the decision they’d made for her own well-being. Her throat was sore for an entire day from the following screaming matches, and Kai thought she’d never cry that hard again.
Living with her grandpa across the prefecture was not the nightmare her tantrum suggested it’d be. In fact, Kai really loved him, and still does. Apparently, Ikkei scoffed the day Kai’s father, and his son, gave him a call to inform him of their decision. Tossing him his kid because he couldn’t control her anymore? And he thinks he’s really going to comply and set her straight? The discipline her parents thought he’d bring down on her resulted in a few weekly volleyball lessons, much to the girl’s insistence.
But time goes on, and Kai turns fifteen. And Ikkei knows he can’t take care of her while he’s in the hospital.
So across Miyagi it was again, and then Kai’s living at her parents' house once more in the span of a day. And as she sits in the Karasuno courtyard, staring at groups of friends sharing the familiarity she doesn’t have anymore, Kai wonders when she should’ve visited Yamaguchi when she got the chance.
She was close to doing it, she recalls while she drags a shoe against soil. She had gotten as far as grabbing the handle to her front door to walk a couple yards next door and knock hard, before her thoughts betrayed her once more and she performed a full 180 to stomp right back into her still undecorated bedroom. As she focused on unpacking, her eyes would stare out the window that faced Yamaguchi’s room, his own window just across from hers. His curtains remained closed the entire time, and Kai wondered if looking at her bedroom would sadden him with the reminder she was across-prefecture. Not anymore, but he had no way of knowing.
The universe has a funny way of doing things. Two boys, just a ways up ahead, pass her line of sight.
Kai doesn’t pay much mind to them, focusing on loudly sipping her empty carton of chocolate milk. Her thoughts wander with impossible scenarios and nostalgic memories, somehow missing the heads of moss green and blonde hair despite how those very colors overflood the chaos that rages in her mind. And Kai doesn’t notice when they stop just ahead of her, like men on a mission. Nor when their heads turn to her, and their expressions contain utter disbelief. She simply continues drinking nothing from the straw, like the sound of her obnoxious act isn’t drawing them in like moths to a flame. She has no clue.
She finally does when they disrupt her peace, suddenly back to the present when two tall figures loom over her. Kai wants to glare at them—old habits die hard—but the beginnings of her scowl are quickly wiped away when her eyes land on their features just a little closer.
Her meek neighbor with hair reminiscent of moss, the smattering of freckles across his face always something she counted when they spoke. And the other one, a blonde so tall that Kai had pondered to Yamaguchi the first time she met him if he was really their age.
Her expression mirrors theirs, and finally, she stops that god awful sipping as her lips part in shock.
I was just thinking of you guys, she wants to say. The words are on the tip of her tongue.
Instead, she squeezes the carton. “You guys…” she whispers in disbelief. “are so freaking tall.”
She embraces them right after, receiving mixed reactions from their differing personalities that she missed so dearly. And they catch up till the bell rings and signals lunch has come to an end, so preoccupied that the studious trio is late to their next class.