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Bokuto, for all his flaws, carried within him a capacity for love that people routinely underestimated—and then promptly regretted doing so.
It wasn’t the kind of delicate, well-behaved affection that sneaks in gently, like rain seeping into the ground. No. Bokuto’s love struck like a summer storm: loud, sudden, drenching everything in its path, rattling windowpanes and making sure absolutely nobody slept through it. You either braced yourself or got swept away. There was no middle ground
His grandmother used to watch him tear across the yard barefoot, hair flying in twelve separate directions, laughter echoing loud enough to scare the neighborhood cats. With equal parts fondness and dread she’d mutter, “There’s too much love in that boy. One day it’ll flip inside out and burn him alive.”
His mother, folding laundry by the window, would laugh softly at the prophecy. “You can never love too much,” she’d say, shaking her head as if the very idea of too much was an absurdity invented by adults who had forgotten how to feel.
And so Bokuto grew—part warning, part reassurance, entirely incapable of moderation. His heart wasn’t something he could tuck away; it leaked out of him constantly, in his grin that demanded the world grin back, in the booming voice that refused to stay inside walls, in the way he treated every day as if it required a parade. Containing emotion was as unthinkable to him as refusing oxygen.
When Bokuto loved something, the universe was informed immediately and in stereo. Volleyball? He screamed it on rooftops. His friends? He clung to them like gravity. Owl keychains? Carried them everywhere and pressed them into people’s palms whether they asked or not. A particularly good meat bun from the corner store? Declared it a spiritual experience for the ages.
Bokuto Koutarou did not operate in half-measures. The concept of subtlety lived in a different postal code. For him, there were only absolutes—total silence (rare, terrifying) or full-volume devotion (constant, inescapable).
But love, real love, sometimes slipped in sideways. Sometimes his heart blazed with certainty while his brain dawdled several exits behind. He could feel everything in technicolor, and yet it took him embarrassingly long to give the feeling its proper name.
Which is why the revelation that he, Bokuto Koutarou, was in fact harboring a crush on one Akaashi Keiji, did not arrive like a thunderclap. It crept up, simmered and ambushed him when he wasn’t looking.
It took exactly fifty hours and thirty-nine minutes from the first spark of recognition to the catastrophic, world-upending acknowledgment.
Not that he counted.
Volleyball practice at Fukurōdani Academy had reached its pause—the kind of short break that dangled like a carrot before exhausted players, merciful in theory and cruel in practice. The whistle’s echo still trembled in the humid summer air as bodies spilled into the narrow strip of shade wedged between the school building and the gym. It wasn’t much, just a meager band of relief carved out by concrete and brick, but in the heavy July heat it might as well have been an oasis with palm trees and running fountains.
They collapsed into it with the gracelessness of the half-dead. Shoes scuffed against the ground, backs hit benches, water bottles were tilted like lifelines. Some players groaned loud enough to sound theatrical, as if sheer performance might earn them an extra five minutes of rest. Others crouched forward, gulping water with the desperate faith that rehydration alone could resurrect them. The laughter that rose between them was thin, painted by exhaustion, but stubbornly alive. Above it all, the cicadas sang like maniacs, their chorus drowning out nearly every human attempt at conversation.
Bokuto Koutarou, for once, did not take center stage. He slid down against the rough wall of the gym, legs stretched far out, head tipped back so sweat ran from his hairline down the column of his throat. He looked every bit the warrior at rest—drained but far from finished, his chest still rising with the rhythm of someone already plotting the next attack. His golden eyes searched across the courtyard, restless even in stillness, until they inevitably caught on a point of gravity that never failed to hold him.
Akaashi Keiji.
He stood only a few feet away, as calm and composed as if the temperature weren’t doing its best impression of a sauna. But the summer betrayed him in small, human ways. The faint flush across his cheeks. The thin sheen of sweat at his temples. The way a lock of hair clung stubbornly to his forehead no matter how carefully he brushed it back.
And then came the gesture—simple, unremarkable, and catastrophic. Akaashi wrinkled his nose, as though faintly irritated by the sting of salt in his eyes. His hand rose, and without even glancing around, he lifted the hem of his shirt to wipe his face.
It was nothing. A practical motion. A second’s worth of action. But the fabric rose, and with it came the flash of skin beneath: lean muscle carved from repetition, a stomach taut with the invisible discipline of endless drills, sweat glinting in the half-light like glass poured across every line. It should have been ordinary. Easily missed. Background detail.
But Bokuto was constitutionally incapable of a passing glance.
The world narrowed. His gaze fixed and locked, pupils dilating like a camera lens, his entire body stilling as though it had just been ordered to stop under pain of death. His lungs kept working only because they had to. His mind? Absolutely not. His mind was gone, hijacked, overrun by a single impossible thoughtless awareness: Akaashi, beautiful in ways that no one had warned him about.
Seconds dragged themselves into eternities. Bokuto felt time become elastic, stretching and snapping back with each heartbeat. He didn’t think in sentences—couldn’t. No neat explanation lined up in his head. Instead, his chest burned with something wild and nameless. Awe. Panic. Delight. Terror. All tangled and bursting against his ribs.
When Akaashi finally let his shirt drop, the spell did not so much break as leave a scar.
Around them, life resumed on schedule. Players hauled themselves upright, muttering about drills. Sneakers scraped asphalt, water bottles were capped with tired clicks, and the air thickened again with the hum of voices too resigned to be called cheerful. Bokuto, however, remained fused to the wall like a man struck by lightning and still waiting for his brain to catch up to the fact.
Akaashi turned. His composure, infuriatingly, was untouched. He offered a brief nod, then closed the distance with his trademark calm, authority worn as casually as his uniform. “Bokuto-san. Let’s go.”
No question, no room for argument—just the steady confidence of someone who knew Bokuto would follow.
And of course he did.
He rose on autopilot, body obeying the well-worn rhythm of practice even while his heart hammered a jagged new beat. He trailed after Akaashi, dazed, blinking like someone who had accidentally seen the face of God during a routine water break.
The gym swallowed them back up. The whistle would shriek again soon. Drills would resume. Summer would press down.
But Bokuto’s gaze snagged on the gym clock as they crossed the threshold: 16:32. An ordinary number, clean and square on the face of the clock, of no consequence to anyone else. For the rest of the team, it was just the signal that rest time was over.
For Bokuto, it was the precise moment the earth tilted beneath his feet and refused to tilt back. A timestamp carved into his chest, silent and immovable, marking the second the world decided to change.
What to do with such a revelation was, frankly, beyond Bokuto’s pay grade. He didn’t know what category of discovery this belonged to—was it supposed to be an epiphany, like realizing you actually could do calculus if you just stopped panicking? Or was it one of those terrifying, life-altering truths people wrote bad poetry about? Whatever it was, it had chosen him here, now, in the middle of volleyball practice, with sweat dripping down his spine and his brain operating on half a protein bar.
Not exactly the conditions for profound emotional clarity.
But Bokuto was a creature of instinct, and when instinct failed him (which it did spectacularly and often), he defaulted to his only weapon of mass destruction: unrelenting, undivided attention.
So in the purest expression of Bokuto logic, when he found something interesting, he didn’t let go. He looked.
And for the next ninety minutes, he looked at Akaashi.
He tracked him across the court the way a sunflower tracks the sun—constant, almost ridiculous in its devotion. His eyes followed the precise snap of Akaashi’s wrist as he set a perfect toss, the flex of shoulders, the steady grace of footwork that made chaos fall into order. It wasn’t just admiration for skill—though there was plenty of that—it was something stickier, heavier. Each detail felt like a clue to a mystery Bokuto hadn’t realized he was solving until now.
But the true danger wasn’t the shoulders, or the hands, or the sharp clean movements of a setter in his element.
It was the face.
Bokuto caught himself staring far too often, hypnotized by the kind of features that seemed designed to be severe but betrayed themselves at the edges. The faint, unreadable calm that never quite tipped into coldness. The black hair that curled rebelliously at the ends, no matter how disciplined the rest of him was. And the eyes—those impossible blue-green eyes.
Dark, like the sea.
The thought dropped into his mind like a pebble into a pond, and Bokuto froze. Because suddenly there was poetry happening in his head. Him. Bokuto Koutarou. Poetry was not his natural dialect. His languages were limited to: volleyball, enthusiasm, and shouting about carbs. And yet here he was, comparing a teammate’s eyes to the ocean as if he were auditioning for some doomed romantic hero role.
The realization hit between a set and a serve, wedged awkwardly into the rhythm of practice: whatever had knocked him flat in the courtyard wasn’t a passing storm. Something fundamental had shifted inside him, and it wasn’t shifting back.
He didn’t have the words for it yet, but the feeling pulsed through his body in the same rhythm as the game itself: absolute, undeniable, impossible to ignore.
When the final whistle shrilled, practice dissolved into its usual haze of end-of-day exhaustion. Sneakers squeaked one last time against the polished wood, water bottles clattered to the ground, and the team stumbled toward the locker room in a collective zombie shuffle.
Bokuto went with them, buzzing faintly like he’d swallowed electricity. He told himself he was simply tired, that his gaze wandered because it needed something steady to land on. He repeated it like a mantra: just tired, just wandering, just coincidence.
But his eyes, traitors that they were, betrayed him every single time.
They always came back to Akaashi.
In the locker room, chaos reigned in its usual muted fashion: locker doors clanging open and shut, the shuffle of clothes being pulled on, the low murmur of teammates swapping complaints about drills or weekend plans. Bokuto, however, was only half-present. His body moved on autopilot—unzipping, tugging, folding with varying degrees of success—while his mind, traitorous as ever, slipped.
Not toward the obvious traps. He definitely did not stare at the slope of Akaashi’s shoulders as he pulled his shirt over his head. He absolutely did not notice the clean line of collarbone, or the sharp yet elegant curve of his neck damp with sweat. No. That was off-limits. Forbidden territory. He was above that.
So naturally, he stared at Akaashi’s face instead.
It was safer, he told himself. Except it wasn’t. Because exhaustion had painted itself across Akaashi’s features in a way that made him even more arresting: dark hair mussed and sticking stubbornly to his temples, lashes heavy, expression softened into something quieter, gentler. And then, as though fate were out to finish Bokuto off, Akaashi turned his head and caught him.
No scowl. No sharp question. Just a slow, almost lazy smile that unfurled without warning, unguarded and devastating.
Bokuto’s brain short-circuited. His head snapped forward so fast it nearly dented the inside of his locker. In the next thirty seconds, he managed to change clothes at a speed bordering on superhuman. Shirt, shorts, bag zipped—done, done, done. He was out of there before anyone could so much as blink, the frantic urgency of a man fleeing the scene of a crime propelling him forward.
The hallway blurred around him, his gym bag clutched to his chest like a riot shield. The voices of his teammates faded into the background until all that remained was the cool rush of evening air hitting his face as he burst outside. He walked—no, stormed—into the twilight with no destination in mind, his thoughts colliding like bumper cars in an arena built for chaos.
It wasn’t until much later, long after practice had bled into memory and the campus had settled into the hushed quiet of dusk, that the revelation struck with clarity. At exactly 18:28—not that Bokuto noticed the time—his chest seized with the undeniable truth:
Akaashi Keiji was beautiful.
The word didn’t budge. It clung to him through dinner, threading itself between bites of rice and bursts of laughter at his mother’s grocery anecdotes and his father’s traffic grumbles. He chewed and nodded and joked like normal, but beneath it all the thought pulsed steadily, unshakable: beautiful.
It followed him into the living room, where his little sister shoved her phone under his nose, demanding his reaction to a compilation of kittens tumbling dramatically off couches. He laughed so hard he nearly fell off the couch himself, tears streaking down his cheeks, but even between hiccups of joy, the word crept back in. Beautiful.
And later still, when he lay in the dark of his room staring at the ceiling, there was no escaping it. The night sky winked through his window, faint stars scattered across the frame, and they betrayed him—glittering in a way that felt too much like certain eyes he knew. Bokuto groaned, face buried into his pillow, neck burning hot as though the stars themselves were mocking him.
This was not normal. He didn’t think of just anyone this way. Beautiful wasn’t supposed to echo like a serve reverberating in his chest, wasn’t supposed to turn his brain into a factory for metaphors he had no business producing. This was different. Wild. Dangerous.
Which left him, obviously, with only one scientific course of action: gather more data.
For research. For accuracy. For certainty.
So, at precisely 2:31 in the morning, Bokuto sat up in bed, phone glowing against his face. He stared at the empty message screen, thumb hovering only a moment before moving with the conviction of a man proposing a groundbreaking experiment.
Akaashi, wanna watch a movie with me tomorrow evening?
Morning arrived like an ambush, prying Bokuto from tangled sheets and dragging him into consciousness with the subtlety of a whistle blown directly in his ear. He groaned, blinking against the light leaking through his curtains, fumbling for his phone with the determination of a man searching for oxygen.
And there it was.
At exactly 7:30, Akaashi’s reply had landed. A reply that, in true Akaashi fashion, contained no wasted words, no unnecessary punctuation, just the quiet efficiency of someone who believed brevity was not merely a style but a moral imperative.
What time?
Bokuto read it once. Twice. Then a third time, each pass setting off another spark under his ribs. The fog of sleep cleared in an instant. His pulse surged. The day seemed to sharpen around him, brighter, warmer, as though Akaashi’s two words had personally commanded the sun to rise a little higher.
This wasn’t like any other message. Teammates texted him all the time—reminders about practice, memes, requests for borrowed notes. Useful, yes, sometimes funny, but never something that made his chest fizz like a shaken soda bottle. This—this was different. This was Akaashi. Writing to him. Directly.
By the time the clock had shuffled itself from 9:06 to 9:07, Bokuto was still sitting upright in bed, grinning helplessly at his phone. Finally, with all the reckless enthusiasm of a man attempting flight by jumping off a roof with a bed sheet, his thumbs took control.
Any time!!! We could watch two movies!! I’ve got snacks!!! Do you like comedy or action or both?? \:D \:D \:D
He reread it once. Smiled. Added more exclamation marks. And an owl emoji. And, because it felt right und restraint was not part of his vocabulary, a volleyball. Then he hit send and collapsed back into his pillow, legs kicking the air, waiting for the phone to light up again.
Downstairs, the smell of eggs and toast greeted him. He bounded into the kitchen in pajamas, hair shooting off in improbable angles, and plopped into his chair. His mother glanced over the rim of her mug, noting how he placed his phone carefully beside his plate like a sacred offering.
“You’re fidgety this morning,” she said. “Is it volleyball?”
Bokuto shook his head, cheeks stuffed with egg, voice too bright. “Nope!”
Another furtive glance at the screen. Still nothing.
His mother raised an eyebrow but wisely let it go, sipping her tea while her son alternated between inhaling breakfast and lovingly glaring at his phone.
At 9:53, salvation arrived.
Akaashi’s second message was just as concise, pared to bone and muscle, but Bokuto read it like scripture.
Evening is fine. 19:00?
That was all. Two lines. But to Bokuto it may as well have been a sonnet. He reread it three times, grin stretching wider each pass, until he burst out laughing in sheer delight, startling his mother and causing his sister to yell from the living room about kittens on TV.
“Yes! 19:00! I’ll bring popcorn!!” he announced, loudly enough for the neighbors to hear—then remembered belatedly that he hadn’t typed it yet. Fumbling, he hammered the words into his phone, added gratuitous emojis, and hit send with the glee of someone detonating fireworks.
The rest of the morning was doomed. His life now orbited one singular event: at seven o’clock sharp, he was going to watch a movie with Akaashi.
Preparation, therefore, became its own marathon.
Step one: the bath. He soaked longer than usual, convinced that if he emerged even one percent less radiant than possible, the evening would be ruined. He scrubbed his hair with such vigor that the bathroom steamed like a hot spring.
Next came hair. He worked even more gel than usual through his fingers, prodded, smoothed, then spiked again, staring at his reflection with the intensity of an artist before a canvas. After fourty minutes of battle, he stepped back, satisfied. The result was distinctly… distinct. Even more taller, more sharper, with an aerodynamic quality that suggested he might achieve flight if he ran fast enough. Bokuto beamed. Surely this was the hairstyle destined to impress.
Then came clothing. Here, disaster struck.
Shirts flew. Shorts were tried and discarded. Sweatpants were tested, rejected, reconsidered. A button-up made him look “too serious,” while his favorite hoodie screamed “too casual.” He groaned, collapsing on the floor as though the sheer injustice of fashion had struck him down.
It was only when his mother poked her head into the room, sighed with the weight of maternal wisdom, and reminded him that clean, simple, and comfortable was enough, that Bokuto rose again, chastened but determined.
At the local konbini, Bokuto raided the shelves with the single-minded focus of an apex predator. Chips, chocolate, gummy candy, ice cream bars—anything even remotely related to the concept of “snack” went into his basket. By the time he reached the register, the clerk regarded him with something between awe and alarm. Bokuto only grinned, certain he was on the path to success.
On the walk home, doubt crept in. Should I bring flowers? The image flickered through his mind—him, holding a bouquet, standing at Akaashi’s door. His ears flamed. No. Too obvious. Too much. Too date-like.
He gnawed his lip, thinking. And then, inspiration: something subtler. Something useful. Something thoughtful without being incriminating. By the time he reached his front gate, the decision was made.
He would bring Akaashi’s favorite sports drink, chilled to perfection.
A gesture of friendship. Of thoughtfulness. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Bokuto had never thought four minutes could feel like standing at the gates of destiny, but there he was: early. Early enough to fidget on the doorstep, to adjust the strap of his bag three times, to check his reflection in the dark gloss of the door’s glass. By the time it opened, he was wound tighter than a jump serve.
Akaashi appeared in the frame with the same calm gravity he carried everywhere, but one eyebrow tilted upward in the faintest expression of disbelief. “You’re early,” he said, as though announcing an eclipse.
Bokuto beamed, lifting his konbini bag like an Olympic medal. “I was excited!”
The words tumbled out bright and guileless, but the grin faltered when his brain finally caught up with his eyes.
Akaashi’s hair was damp. Strands clung in lazy arcs to his forehead, still glistening faintly, while the edges curled soft against his temples. Steam clung to his skin as though it hadn’t yet made the full transition from shower to world, and the warmth of it carried forward in the smallest, most devastating details: a drop slipping down the line of his jaw, the faint flush high on his cheeks, the looseness of posture that came from comfort rather than fatigue.
Bokuto’s thoughts, which usually galloped freely and loudly, tangled and crashed in a pileup of impressions. He followed up the stairs a step too close, bag heavy in his arms, as though proximity might help him decode the puzzle of Akaashi’s ordinary, unbearable existence.
And then it hit him. A fragrance—soft, faint, sweet. Shampoo. Cherry, maybe, or something close. It wound its way into his lungs before he could stop it, dizzying in its simplicity. He leaned in, not much, just enough, just a fraction—convinced he was subtle, though his track record suggested otherwise.
“Are you… smelling my hair?”
The delivery was perfect Akaashi: calm, even, a shade away from bored.
Bokuto nearly catapulted into the wall. “No!” His voice cracked too loud, ricocheted down the hallway. “I mean—yes! But not like—! I mean it just—it smells really nice!”
Akaashi stopped on the landing, turning his head just enough for water-dark strands to slide across his forehead. He regarded Bokuto with that long, unreadable silence that stretched forever and revealed nothing. A drop of water slid from his hair onto the collar of his shirt. Then, with a sigh soft enough to be mercy, he turned away.
“Try not to make it weird, Bokuto-san.”
Bokuto’s grin came back lopsided, sheepish, hopelessly uncontained. His cheeks burned, his chest pounded, and his arms ached from clutching the snack bag—but none of that mattered. Because Akaashi hadn’t told him to stop.
And in Bokuto’s universe, that counted as victory.
Akaashi having a TV in his room was, in Bokuto’s opinion, nothing short of a blessing. His own parents would never allow it—something about “bedrooms being for sleeping, not distractions.” But of course Akaashi had one. Of course. Because Akaashi had self-control. Because Akaashi could actually turn the TV off at the appropriate time, unlike Bokuto, who had once been caught watching volleyball highlight reels at three in the morning with the volume all the way up.
Akaashi was just perfect like that.
Bokuto caught himself thinking it, cheeks warming, but the thought didn’t go away. Instead, it multiplied, growing legs and branching out like ivy. Every little thing Akaashi did seemed suddenly… compliment-worthy. The calm way he rolled up his bedding to make space on the mattress? Perfect. The neat fold of the blanket, as if the bed had been waiting all day for this moment? Perfect. Even the way he set the remote on the table beside him—like it belonged in its exact spot—was, Bokuto’s brain unhelpfully supplied, amazing.
The TV sat on a low table at the foot of the bed, the screen glowing faintly as the movie queued up. They settled side by side against the headboard, legs stretched out, shoulders brushing. The mattress dipped slightly under their combined weight, pulling them just a little closer.
And that was when Bokuto noticed: his arm against Akaashi’s. His knee brushing Akaashi’s leg. Contact. Tiny, accidental, constant.
It should have been nothing. But to Bokuto, every touch sparked like static beneath his skin. His pulse quickened in his throat, his chest. He stared at the screen, determined not to move away, determined not to let it show.
Akaashi is amazing at making space, he thought wildly, as though that was a normal compliment. Even when there isn’t any.
The movie started. Bokuto did not notice.
The opening credits rolled, some dramatic music swelled, and somewhere in the first five minutes someone on-screen probably said something important—but Bokuto’s brain had already departed the room. His entire world had narrowed to a series of hyper-specific observations: the weight of Akaashi’s shoulder pressing against his, the warmth of Akaashi’s thigh brushing his own, the casual rise and fall of Akaashi’s breathing just inches away.
The summer heat didn’t help. The open window offered little more than a sluggish breeze that only stirred the heavy air around them. Sweat clung to Bokuto’s back, made his shirt stick. Every shift of his arm or leg left him achingly aware of how close he was to Akaashi. His setter, cool as always, didn’t even flinch—just watched the screen like nothing at all was happening.
Bokuto, meanwhile, was caught in a private battle.
He told himself: Don’t look. Focus on the movie. But of course, he looked. Just a glance at Akaashi’s profile—the way his hair curled faintly at the edges, the soft concentration in his eyes, the faint downward line of his lips.
And then those eyes flicked sideways.
Caught.
He snapped his gaze forward like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime, nodding emphatically at the TV as though he had understood every plot point so far. His ears burned, his neck prickled. Surely Akaashi couldn’t read his thoughts. Surely.
Three minutes later, it happened again.
Another glance, another stolen look. Bokuto couldn’t help himself—Akaashi’s face was simply there, so close, so perfectly framed by the glow of the television. He was just appreciating the view. Nothing suspicious about that. Perfectly scientific.
Until Akaashi turned his head again.
Their eyes met for the briefest second. Bokuto froze like a deer in headlights, then wrenched his gaze back to the movie with such force it nearly gave him whiplash. “Ha-ha, wow, great movie,” he muttered to no one, voice a little too loud.
Akaashi’s expression barely shifted, but the corner of his mouth twitched—so small it might have been a trick of the light.
By the forty-minute mark, Bokuto had perfected a rhythm: glance, admire, panic, look away. Glance, admire, panic, look away. Each cycle left him hotter, twitchier, more restless, until he wasn’t sure if he was burning from the summer air or from the sheer effort of trying to look normal.
And Akaashi, maddeningly, gave nothing away. No teasing, no scolding, just those eyes that always seemed to know exactly when to catch him in the act.
By the eighth or ninth cycle, Bokuto was starting to think he might actually combust. His gaze kept sneaking sideways of its own accord, like his eyes had developed a willpower separate from the rest of him. Every time, Akaashi caught him. Every time, Bokuto nearly launched himself off the bed in panic.
It was inevitable, then, that Akaashi would eventually say something.
“Bokuto-san,” he murmured, voice calm, eyes still on the screen.
Bokuto flinched. “Y-Yeah?”
“You don’t have to pretend you’re watching the movie.”
The words were delivered so evenly, so flat, that it took Bokuto a second to register them. When he did, his heart ricocheted in his chest. “Wha—? I am watching! I’m totally following the story!” He gestured wildly at the screen, where an explosion had just gone off. “See? They’re, uh… blowing things up!”
Akaashi finally turned his head, meeting Bokuto’s frantic grin with an expression of deadpan patience.
“That’s the opening logo.”
Bokuto’s mouth opened, closed, then opened again, searching desperately for a comeback that didn’t exist. His ears went crimson. He laughed too loudly, smacked his thigh as if that would make it less embarrassing, and finally buried his face in the nearest snack bag for cover.
Akaashi looked back at the TV, a ghost of a smile flickering over his lips before disappearing again.
Bokuto sat rigid, half-buried in the crinkle of his snack bag, praying for the earth to swallow him whole. Akaashi, of course, showed no mercy.
Ten minutes later, when Bokuto’s eyes strayed again—just for a second, just for research purposes—Akaashi’s voice cut through the silence like a knife.
“You missed the main character’s name. Want me to rewind?”
Bokuto jolted so hard he nearly spilled chips all over the bed. “N-No! I totally got it! It’s—uh—” He blurted the name of a player from a rival school.
Akaashi didn’t even blink. “Close.”
Another ten minutes. Bokuto was sure he was being stealthy this time, sneaking glances only when Akaashi blinked, when the light from the TV flashed bright enough to cover him. But then:
“Bokuto-san.”
His head whipped around. “What?!”
“You’ve stared at me longer than the movie’s runtime already.”
Bokuto’s jaw dropped. “I—wha—! No! I’m not—staring!” He waved his arms, the panic only making him look guiltier. “I was—uh—looking for… popcorn crumbs! On your face!”
Akaashi’s eyebrow twitched upward. “Convenient excuse.”
By the hour mark, Bokuto was sweating more than during drills. His heart kept tripping over itself, his hands restless on the snack bags, and every time he dared to look again, Akaashi was already watching him out of the corner of his eye, lips tugged in the barest suggestion of a smile.
By the time the credits rolled, Bokuto hadn’t absorbed a single plot point. He couldn’t have said who the villain was, or why the hero had a dramatic monologue, or why there had been three separate explosions involving motorcycles. What he did know—down to the curve of every detail—was how many times Akaashi’s knee had brushed his own, how the dim blue glow of the TV lit up the sharp lines of his face, and how his hair still smelled faintly like cherries even two hours later.
The movie ended, Akaashi clicked the remote, and silence settled over the room. Bokuto scrambled for something clever to say, anything to mask the fact that his brain was jelly. “Great movie, huh?”
Akaashi’s head tilted slightly. “You didn’t watch it.”
Bokuto choked. “Wh—! I totally watched it!”
“You called the villain ‘Kageyama’ halfway through.”
Bokuto’s hands flailed. “It was a slip of the tongue!”
Akaashi only gave him a patient, practiced look—the kind reserved for Bokuto-related chaos—and began gathering the snack wrappers into a neat pile. Bokuto tried to help, but his clumsy enthusiasm only sent an empty soda can rolling off the bed and clattering across the floor. He dove after it, misjudged the edge of the mattress, and ended up in a graceless sprawl half-on, half-off the carpet.
Akaashi didn’t even blink. “Careful.”
“I’m fine!” Bokuto wheezed, popping back up with a sheepish grin. “Totally fine!” His neck burned red as he jammed the can into a trash bag and flopped back onto the mattress like nothing had happened.
It was mortifying, utterly mortifying. His heart was still racing from something that had nothing to do with falling. But Akaashi just shook his head with the faintest exhale of amusement, like this was exactly the kind of thing Bokuto would do.
At the door, Bokuto waved with all the enthusiasm of a man seeing off a teammate after nationals. “Thanks, Akaashi! That was awesome! I’ll—uh—see you Monday!”
Akaashi gave his usual small nod. “Goodnight, Bokuto-san.” And with that, the door clicked shut, quiet and simple, as if the evening hadn’t been the emotional earthquake it had been for one of them.
By 23:26, Bokuto was sprawled across his own bed, arms thrown wide, staring up at the ceiling as though it might offer answers. His brain, however, had settled into a conclusion after an evening of intense, scientific observation.
One: Akaashi Keiji was very beautiful. That was no longer in question. The evidence was overwhelming.
Two: he smelled nice. Not just nice—dangerously nice. The kind of nice that made you lean in without realizing you were leaning. Bokuto had tested this thoroughly, perhaps too thoroughly, but science demanded rigor.
And three: he was perfect at transforming his bedroom into a makeshift movie theater. The way the bedding had been rolled up just so, the way the TV was positioned at the foot of the bed, the effortless organization that made the whole thing feel natural—perfect. Perfect like Akaashi himself.
Bokuto groaned into his pillow, kicking his legs once, twice, like a restless kid. His chest was warm, his thoughts tangled, and his conclusion, written in the secret ink of his heart, was clear.
Akaashi was amazing.
And Bokuto had no idea what to do about it.
Sunday morning was quiet in the Bokuto household. Too quiet, considering Bokuto’s brain was anything but.
He lay sprawled across his bed, staring at the ceiling fan as if it might spin his thoughts into order. It didn’t. His thoughts had decided on a theme for the day: Akaashi Keiji. Not just beautiful. Not just pretty. But amazing. Awesome. The best friend anyone could possibly ask for.
And once Bokuto decided something was true, he had to prove it—to himself. Which meant examples. Evidence.
Exhibit A: That time he’d forgotten his kneepads at practice. He’d been ready to launch into a thirty-minute meltdown speech about how it meant he was doomed, cursed, possibly already injured in spirit. And then, before he could spiral into full despair, Akaashi had quietly held out his spare pair, as though anticipating the disaster from a mile away. Amazing. Who even carried an extra set of kneepads, just in case? Akaashi, that’s who.
Exhibit B: The time Bokuto had nearly missed his train home because he’d been too distracted showing Komi a new serve motion. The doors had been closing, doom was seconds away, when suddenly a hand had grabbed his bag and yanked him in at the last possible moment. Akaashi, deadpan, hair barely ruffled, had said, “Please try to remember trains have schedules, Bokuto-san.” Bokuto had declared him a hero for the rest of the week. Awesome.
Exhibit C: The infamous “Birthday Cake Incident.” Bokuto had decided to bake one for his little sister, except somewhere between flour and sugar, the cake had turned into a geological structure better suited for a museum than a party. Akaashi had shown up, surveyed the wreckage, and—instead of panicking—had calmly taken over, salvaging the mess into something not only edible but actually good. Bokuto still swore the cake had tasted like victory. Perfect friend material.
Bokuto groaned into his pillow, equal parts overwhelmed and delighted. How was he supposed to function when Akaashi was just this… this… Akaashi all the time?
By late Sunday afternoon, Bokuto’s private list of reasons why Akaashi was amazing had ballooned to the size of a small epic poem. He lay on his stomach across his bed, chin in his hands, phone glowing in front of him. He had concluded that Akaashi was pretty, smelled nice, was smart, calm, perfect at snacks, and—if Bokuto was being honest with himself—probably superhuman in twenty-seven other undocumented ways.
But here was the problem: science required peer review.
He could not, in good conscience, keep his findings to himself. If he was going to prove—prove—that Akaashi was objectively incredible, then he needed data from the field. Reliable testimonies. Concrete evidence. A double-blind study, preferably. (Though he wasn’t totally sure what that was. He just knew it sounded official.)
So, naturally, he started calling his teammates.
The first victim was Komi.
“Yo! Komi!” Bokuto barked the moment the line picked up. “Do you think Akaashi is amazing?”
There was a pause, then a laugh. “Uh, yeah? Obviously? He’s Akaashi.”
Bokuto beamed into his pillow. “Right?! I knew it!”
“Wait, why are you asking—”
Click. Bokuto had already hung up.
Next was Konoha.
“Konoha!” Bokuto said, barely giving him a chance to say hello. “On a scale of one to ten, how awesome is Akaashi?”
Konoha groaned. “Bokuto, it’s Sunday.”
“Yeah, but it’s IMPORTANT.”
Another groan. “Fine. Ten. He’s a ten. Happy?”
Bokuto punched the air with his fist. “YES. THANK YOU. SCIENCE!”
Konoha muttered something about blocking his number. Bokuto ignored it in the name of progress.
Finally, he tried Washio, because Washio was honest, and Bokuto needed unbiased testimony.
“Washio,” Bokuto said, very solemn now, “would you say that Akaashi is, like… the best?”
There was a long, flat silence. The kind of silence in which entire civilizations could rise and fall. Then Washio’s voice, low and completely deadpan: “Bokuto. Are you seriously conducting a survey?”
“…Yes.”
Another silence. Then, without a hint of humor: “Akaashi’s the only reason we survive practice. If that answers your question.”
Bokuto’s jaw dropped in delight. “That’s the best answer EVER. I’m writing it down.”
And he did, frantically typing notes into his phone like he was building a dissertation that would one day be presented to the Volleyball Nobel Committee. His grin nearly split his face. Data collected, hypotheses confirmed: Akaashi was officially, scientifically, universally acknowledged as amazing.
Bokuto lay back on his bed, utterly satisfied. Peer review success. Subject: Akaashi Keiji. Conclusion: perfection.
Bokuto had almost declared his survey complete when he realized something critical. All of his data so far had come from inside Fukurōdani. That was useful, yes, but not comprehensive. For accuracy, for fairness, for scientific integrity, he needed an outside perspective. Someone who had interacted with Akaashi beyond the walls of their school. Preferably someone shady enough to count as a “neutral third party.”
There was only one man for the job.
He scrolled through his contacts, thumb hovering dramatically, then hit dial.
“Kuroo!” Bokuto boomed the second the line connected. “Okay, super important question: how amazing do you think Akaashi is?”
There was a beat of silence, then a chuckle so smug it practically slithered down the line. “Ohhh. So you finally figured it out, huh?”
“Figured what out?” Bokuto frowned, gripping his phone tighter.
“That you’ve got a crush on him.”
“WHAT?!” Bokuto shot upright so fast his phone nearly launched across the room. “No, no, no, no! This is Research! Data collection! Peer-reviewed survey!” His voice cracked on “survey,” but he barreled on. “I’m just proving—objectively—that Akaashi is amazing!”
Kuroo snorted, the sound far too knowing. “Right. And the hours you’ve spent staring at him instead of the ball—that was science too?”
Bokuto flopped back onto his bed, groaning into his pillow. “I’m NOT—well, I was—but it was research!”
“Right,” Kuroo drawled, smug enough to be illegal. “Like that time you made your entire team stop practice because Akaashi sneezed.”
Bokuto spluttered. “He sneezed three times in a row! That’s a health risk! I was just making sure he had water!”
“Sure,” Kuroo said, unimpressed. “And what about during the Tokyo training camp? When Akaashi walked into the gym and you tripped over a ball you weren’t even touching, went down like a tree, and then told everyone it was ‘gravity’s fault.’”
“That was gravity’s fault!” Bokuto insisted, voice cracking under the weight of his own mortification. “Akaashi wasn’t even—okay, he was nearby, but I wasn’t looking at him! Not like that!”
Kuroo’s laugh rolled through the receiver, warm and merciless. “Bokuto, come on. You’ve been broadcasting this crush louder than your cross spikes for months. The only person who doesn’t see it is you. Well—” A deliberate pause. “—and maybe Akaashi. But that’s just because he’s too polite to call you out.”
Bokuto groaned, collapsing into his pillow. His voice came out muffled but frantic. “I don’t have a crush, Kuroo! I’m just… I’m just proving how amazing he is! Objectively! With evidence!”
“Mhm. Sure.” Kuroo’s smirk was practically audible. “Keep telling yourself that, you idiot.”
Click.
Silence.
Bokuto stared at the ceiling, phone limp in his hand, his mind replaying every sneeze, every stumble, every second of “data collection.” His chest felt hot, his ears hotter, and somewhere deep in his stomach, a little fluttery panic was trying very hard to disguise itself as “objective analysis.”
Science had betrayed him.
Bokuto rolled around on his bed like a beached seal, groaning into his sheets. Kuroo’s words echoed in his skull with the subtlety of a marching band: “You’ve got a crush. You’ve been broadcasting it louder than your spikes.”
“NOOOO!” Bokuto bellowed at the ceiling, limbs flailing.
But even as he yelled, a traitorous part of his brain whispered: What if Kuroo’s right? What if this is a crush?
The thought made his stomach flip in a way no amount of ab crunches ever had.
By the time he dragged himself downstairs, his head was a storm cloud of panic and half-baked theories. His mother was in the kitchen, humming as she chopped vegetables, perfectly serene, as though her son wasn’t in the middle of an existential crisis. Bokuto plopped down at the table with all the grace of a collapsing tower.
“Mom,” he began, voice deadly serious. “Hypothetically. If someone, who is not me, thought another person, who is also definitely not me, was… like… pretty. Beautiful. And amazing. And smelled nice. And was so cool it makes you wanna scream—would that mean they’re, uh, in love?”
His mother didn’t even look up from her cutting board. “Sounds like someone having a crush.”
Bokuto flailed his arms so violently the chair squeaked against the floor. “NO, no, no, no, no! Not a crush! More like… admiration! Or—or friendship! Or—or RESEARCH! Yeah! It’s like an experiment! Like when you stare at something for a long time to figure out why it’s so great!”
Finally, she turned to him, smiling the kind of calm, knowing smile only a mother could wield. “Sweetheart, if you have to watch someone that closely just to ‘figure them out,’ maybe your heart already has the answer.”
Bokuto froze, mouth half-open, eyes wide. “Wait… so… you think this… totally anonymous person… might have a crush?”
“I think,” she said gently, placing a hand on his shoulder, “that if you can’t stop smiling when you talk about them, and if your whole face lights up just thinking about them, then you should trust your heart. It usually knows the truth before your head does.”
Bokuto’s ears burned. He ducked his head into his arms on the table, muffling a groan. “Nooooo… it’s real… it’s really a crush…”
His mom only chuckled and patted his back. “Follow your heart, Koutarou. It won’t lead you wrong.”
He stayed there, face buried in his folded arms, the kitchen smelling faintly of miso and fresh-cut vegetables. His world had tilted again, just as violently as it had two days earlier. Only now, it came with his mother’s quiet certainty: this was a crush.
Bokuto’s footsteps thundered up the stairs like an avalanche, followed by the unmistakable slam of his bedroom door. The ceiling light rattled faintly, then silence.
In the kitchen, his mother arched an eyebrow but kept drying her hands.
His father ambled in a moment later, already in a soft T-shirt and loose pants, still smelling faintly of the garden he’d been tending all afternoon. He tilted his head toward the ceiling as though it might give him answers. “What on earth was that racket? Sounded like Koutarou just lost nationals up there.”
His wife didn’t even glance up. “Nothing so tragic,” she said mildly. “Our son has just realized his crush on Keiji-kun.”
There was a beat. Then his father let out a laugh so loud it startled the cat off the windowsill. “Finally! Took him long enough. Every meal it’s been ‘Akaashi said this,’ ‘Akaashi set it perfectly,’ ‘Akaashi’s the smartest person alive.’ I thought the boy had already married him in his head.”
His wife’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Do you remember last week? When I served curry and he nearly dropped his spoon because he said it was ‘almost as good as Akaashi’s perfect set’?”
Her husband groaned, rubbing his forehead with exaggerated despair. “Or the time he told your sister at dinner that if Akaashi were a food, he’d be—what was it?—‘a perfectly grilled meat bun, because he always shows up exactly when you need him.’”
That earned a laugh from her, soft and fond. “And yet he still needed tonight to figure it out.”
“Well, you know Koutarou,” her husband said, pouring himself a glass of water. “The boy can read a defense in midair but can’t read his own heart with both hands and a manual.”
She folded the dish towel neatly, eyes glinting with mischief. “All the more reason I should give Keiji-kun’s mother a call. If Koutarou has finally admitted it—to himself, at least—it may be time to start planning the wedding.”
Her husband choked on his water, laughing between coughs. “The wedding? Already?”
“Yes,” she replied sweetly, as though suggesting she might pick up more miso. “It never hurts to be prepared.”
He shook his head, chuckling as he leaned against the counter. “Prepared, huh? Let’s start with dinner. It’s after seven. If you start planning weddings now, we’ll be eating cold rice by tomorrow morning.”
She kissed his cheek, setting the towel aside. “Dinner first. Wedding later.”
Monday morning dawned bright and sharp, but Bokuto’s nerves were a thunderstorm under his skin. He had been pacing in front of Akaashi’s house since 7:02, clutching his school bag like a lifeline, every two seconds checking the door as though willing it to open.
At exactly 7:26, it did.
Akaashi stepped out, adjusting his uniform jacket, his expression as calm as ever. “Good morning, Bokuto-san.”
And that was it. That was the spark.
Because Bokuto had sworn he would hold it in—at least until they were halfway to school, maybe after a joke, maybe once the timing was right. But the sight of Akaashi, neat and steady in the doorway, hair soft in the morning light, was simply too much. His heart launched itself out of his chest and dragged his mouth with it.
“Akaashi!” he blurted, voice booming down the quiet street. “I LIKE YOU!”
Akaashi blinked. Slowly. The corner of his mouth twitched as if to ask whether this declaration needed to be loud enough for the entire neighborhood to take notes.
Bokuto flailed, panicked, words spilling in a rush. “Like—like-like you! Not just ‘you’re amazing at volleyball’ like! Or ‘your hair smells nice’ like! Or—or—‘you make the best movie fort’ like! I mean—all of those too, but also—also—you’re—you’re—” He stopped, gasping for breath, face scarlet. “You’re my favorite person, Akaashi! I think you’re perfect, and I don’t know how to stop thinking about you, and—”
Akaashi set his bag down on the step, regarding him with quiet patience, like he was waiting for a serve to land. “Are you finished?”
Bokuto opened his mouth, then closed it again, chest heaving. “…Maybe.”
There was a beat of silence. The morning birds chirped. A neighbor’s dog barked once and fell quiet.
Then Akaashi’s expression softened, a quiet warmth flickering in his eyes. “I know, Bokuto-san.”
Bokuto froze. “Y-you… you know?”
Akaashi gave a tiny nod. “It wasn’t difficult to tell.” His tone was even, but there was the faintest hint of amusement threading through it. “Kuroo-san mentioned you might take some time to realize it yourself.”
“Kuroo—?!” Bokuto groaned, dragging his hands down his face. “Of course he knew! Everyone knew! Everyone except me!”
“Not everyone,” Akaashi said gently. Then, after a pause, “But yes. I knew.”
Bokuto’s heart somersaulted so violently he thought he might actually collapse. “And—and—is that okay? I mean, do you—uh—would you—”
“Yes,” Akaashi said simply, with the kind of calm certainty that silenced all Bokuto’s stammering at once.
For a second, Bokuto just stood there, stunned into rare silence, his brain short-circuiting. Then it all came crashing back in a wave, and he practically launched himself forward, scooping Akaashi into a hug that nearly lifted them both off the ground.
“YES! BEST. DAY. EVER!” Bokuto shouted, voice echoing down the street.
Akaashi sighed, adjusting his grip on his bag, though his lips curved faintly upward against Bokuto’s shoulder. “Please try not to make us late for school, Bokuto-san.”
But he didn’t pull away.
And Bokuto, still grinning like the sun itself, decided that maybe life had never felt this good.