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It starts as little things.
Pieces from a board game he used to love that became unplayable after Natsu threw the spinner and a handful of cards out the window. She’d been in a rage after losing for the third time that car ride, and she’d only been two. Shouyou had long forgiven her for it, but the little plastic pieces made him think of road trips and car rides spent with his sister in the backseat, soft music playing on the radio as the countryside passed them by.
Feathers from a duck pond his mother had taken him to when Natsu came down with the chicken pox. Shouyou had never had chicken pox, so they tried to keep him as far away from her as possible so he wouldn’t get infected to. He remembers hating being away from her for so long, but he’d quickly forgotten about that when his mom had pulled out a bag of bread and they spent the whole afternoon feeding the ducks.
The shiny tag from his first pair of volleyball shoes, bought only days after seeing that life changing game on his way to school. He can still remember the way he’d begged his parents for a volleyball and, of course, a pair of volleyball shoes. He can remember how hard it was to find shoes that would fit him right since his feet were so small – proportionate, but still tiny compared to the height people tend to expect from volleyball players.
The train ticket stub for the train he’d taken to his first – and last – official volleyball game of his middle school carrier. He’d originally kept it purely for that reason, a beginning and an end all wrapped up into one, a reminder of the anguish he’d felt that day, taking him back to the moment the ball had hit the court for the last time. Now… now he doesn’t know how to feel about it. He looks at the ticket stub and thinks about glaring blue eyes and leaf green uniforms and thinks about how far they’ve both come.
Before he knows it the little box under his bed has begun to overflow with what others might consider useless junk.
There’s a crumpled up tournament bracket from the Inter High, red line stopping almost painfully at their match against Aoba Jousai. Hinata wishes he could just throw the damn thing away like anyone else would, but the truth is he doesn’t want to forget. He wants to improve, wants to get better. And if that means clenching his fist every time his eye catches on that horrid piece of paper, then so be it.
There are rocks and random lost things from Tokyo, picked up mostly because of their interesting shapes or patterns. There’s at least a few from every training camp they’ve gone to in Tokyo and Hinata remembers exactly which ones came from where. The piece of river glass from their first training camp looks a little greenish, like the nausea Saeko-nee-san’s driving had given him. The rocks and stray silver beads from the summer training camp are rough and rugged, like their team had been, all raw edges and still-developing angles.
There’s a meat bun shaped phone-strap that he’d seen in one of the boutiques Natsu likes to drag him into and it looks so much like the buns at Ukai’s shop that he has to keep himself from salivating every time he lays eyes on it. He gets hungry when he thinks about evenings spent with the team after practice, but he also smiles a lot. He has a team now, and he wouldn’t trade that for the world.
There’s a small cluster of coin-machine toys that Hinata has inadvertently collected in his quest to achieve the ultimate goal of finally laying his hands on the cute black crow with the golden beak. Usually he would pawn them off to Natsu for quarters or candy but the little owls look a lot like his Fukurodani friends, and the similarities between the cats and a few choice Nekoma members is uncanny. So he keeps them and continues his noble quest for the crow. (The eagle, however, pisses him off for some reason, and he all but begs Natsu to take it off of his hands.)
There’s tags from his black Karasuno track suit, the matte black of the lettering contrasting against the shiny white of the plastic.
There’s a copy of his latest report card, showing off the highest grades he’s ever gotten thanks to the effort of his team.
There’s an empty box of band aids from the fight he had with Kageyama.
There’s more rocks from Tokyo, shiny and large and in every color he could find because that was the day the new quick actually worked.
There’s a hairpin he’d found on Grampa Ukai’s volleyball court that none of the girls or guys there had laid claim to.
There’s a coaster from the karaoke place that they’d gone to as a team. Someone had doodled on everyone’s coasters throughout the night, he assumed Yachi, and his had a cute drawing of a rising sun with unruly flames reaching high into the sky where a cluster of little black birds – crows – flew in a group.
There’s a new tournament bracket, but this time it’s not crumpled up and shoved to the corner of the box. It’s not even in the box. It’s pinned against Shouyou’s wall above his bed, the ink pen paused at the finals, waiting to see which team will come out victorious.
Shouyou can’t wait to scream from the rooftops that he’ll be going to Nationals.
“Oi, idiot, why are you spacing out again?!”
Hinata looks up at Kageyama’s voice, a retort on his lips but it dies just as quickly as it flickered to life. “Nothing.” He finally says. “Did you know that crows are notorious for collecting things they think are interesting?”
Kageyama’s face scrunches more than usual as he glances at Hinata, tossing the ball towards him. “Hah? What’s that supposed to mean? What the hell does a crow find interesting?”
Hinata shrugs as he receives the ball back, not the best but definitely improving. “I dunno, shiny stuff I guess. Don’t you ever pick up random things you find cool? Like rocks from Tokyo training camps or coasters from karaoke bars?”
Kageyama hums as he seems to think about this. “Maybe when I was little?” He shrugs, returning the ball with a little force. “Not so much now, though.”
Hinata blinks, leaning forward just a bit to get a better angle on the ball. “Really? How do you remember all the important things in your life, then?”
Kageyama’s face goes scrunched and dark for a moment as he catches the ball in his hands. He glances at it, glaring. “I guess I’ve never had anything worth remembering.”
Hinata blinks, and thinks of his collection of trivial things. He decides to bring Kageyama one of his rocks, the smooth little inky black one with a chip in one side that made the area rough to the touch. He’d picked it up on the day that they’d left Tokyo for the last time that summer. Maybe Kageyama could start from there and work his way up to a collection of his own.