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In the third consecutive winter Fukurodani went to Nationals, the sky whales arrived.
Akaashi passed over the newspaper, forgoing the crude monochrome sketch of a whale. Instead, he chose the slender volleyball magazine, and passed over his money to the stolid vendor. He tucked the magazine underneath his arm, straightened his umbrella, and continued his slow plow from the station to the school.
Workers in thick rubber boots hacked the sheets of snow into delicate folds. The early morning rush brought cascades of students, each decked in puffy winter coats and thin cotton masks, only their eyes peering out into the storm. A businessman removed his glasses to wipe off the flurry, his reflection in the store window waiting patiently with folded arms. A middle school student stomped before a crosswalk, hands shoved straight into her jacket pockets.
Before homeroom began, he opened the magazine. The glossy edges had wrinkled from the snow. He picked through to page eighteen, opening to a spread about upcoming high school volleyball players from the Tokyo area. From Fukurodani Academy, Bokuto Koutarou. The picture was taken during the Inter High Tournament, a candid shot of Bokuto yelling in victory. His fists were gripped tight, elbows jutting out. His back was arched and his legs were bent enough to emphasize the square padding of his kneepads. The line of his throat was glimmering with sweat.
Behind him, not mentioned in the caption or article, was a frozen still of Akaashi. In the videos, Akaashi’s facial expressions were a fleeting moment, an orderly recording of directional shouts. Now, he closed the magazine and slid it underneath his book. The teacher arrived, and the classroom was filled with clattering chairs and scraping desks. The incriminating corner of the magazine pinched out beneath his textbook.
He hadn’t realized his face could be so obvious.
After school, Akaashi plodded through the sludgy snow. Shirofuku was standing outside, eyes closed and hands gently cupped outwards, absorbing the drifting snowflakes. Her father had once been an ice sculpture, so Akaashi supposed she was enjoying the downpour. When Akaashi opened the club room door, a wave of hot air brushed over him.
“—see,” Bokuto was saying, holding up a battered version of the magazine to Onaga. His copy had already been half-torn.
“Are you quoting yourself again?” Akaashi began to undo his tie, shoving his finger into the knot.
“One time! Only once!” Bokuto winced at Onaga’s dumbfounded expression. “A few times, maybe. Okay, more than a few times.”
But Akaashi must have come in the tail-end of Bokuto’s usual crowing, because Bokuto dropped the magazine on top of a pile of discarded books. Onaga ducked his head apologetically and headed out first. Bokuto bent down to redo the laces of his shoes.
“You’d understand if you read it,” Bokuto said reasonably. “What I said was really cool.”
“I see,” Akaashi said. “You’re assuming we cannot hear what you normally say in your typical whisper.”
“Well, whatever, whatever. It’s not like that article changes anything.” Bokuto toed his sneaker against the floor. “Let’s practice, Akaashi! We’ll do twenty laps! Or fifty!”
Akaashi zipped up his jersey. The door squeaked open and shut, Bokuto’s footsteps flying down the stairs. It was true, he thought. The magazine didn’t change anything. Nothing ever changed.
Beneath the abandoned magazine, there was a thick catalog of universities. Some of the tabs had been bent. He assumed the catalog had been Washio’s copy, left unattended in a brisk spring afternoon.
When Akaashi stepped out, the snow fell in straight sheets. Bokuto was laughing loudly with Konoha and Saru. The white of his jacket blended into the snowfall until even the black and gold stripes disappeared, and Akaashi stood at the railing, hands pressed against the cold bite of metal.
The sky had a meager, bloodless complexion. The sidewalk snow had been matted down by footsteps. A child’s small steps mingled with sneaker prints beside the wide slithering of a reptilian tail next to the work boot of an adult. The thick clouds above the mountains resembled a shadow.
Akaashi leaned against a brick wall, tugging at the curled tongue of his shoe. A small crowd of high school students passed alongside him, umbrellas bobbing. They were wearing Fukurodani uniforms, but he didn’t recognize them. Third-years, he assumed. Someone laughed, high-pitched. A hand leaned on the crook of somebody’s elbow, another huddled beneath the same pallid umbrella. They drifted like gray ghosts down the street.
He didn’t think Bokuto had ever dated anybody, but he couldn’t be certain.
He stopped by the stationery store to purchase a new notebook and eraser. His previous notebook had been filled to the last pages with volleyball club notes. The cashier had a wreath around the horn on his forehead. The plastic bristles swung back and forth while he calculated the change on the cash register.
When he arrived home, Akaashi copied down the last page of notes into his fresh notebook. He had placed the magazine with the rest of his volleyball materials. The cover was casually crooked, as if he was proving a point to himself.
This was Bokuto, after all. The shiny magazine pages could coax some admiration from the students, but surely not any dates. Not enough to urge someone to pull away from the crowd, hands clutched to their chest, asking in a small voice if Bokuto would listen. Bokuto was petulant and childish, loud and willful. He would insist on practicing again and again, deep into the late evening, even while the blockers fled through open doors, wiping the sweat from his forehead and staring for the next ball. And Bokuto would sometimes grab Akaashi’s head with one arm, a strange and uncomfortable hug with Akaashi’s cheek pressed against Bokuto’s hard bicep. Bokuto simply laughed too loud, played too much.
Anybody who liked Bokuto Koutarou would be a fool.
After practice, Akaashi headed to the adviser’s room to drop off some papers.
“Go home first,” he told Bokuto, and crossed the hallway to the teacher’s room. One teacher still marked papers, red pen methodically circling and marking out answers. Another talked softly to a student, her hair overflowing and curling on the floor beside a dropped marker. An old CRT television set buzzed in the background. Two television personalities discussed a scam for glasses that claimed to be able to see these elusive sky whales. The sound was muted, but one held up her hands to receive some silent applause.
He set the pile of papers on the adviser’s desk. It should have been a captain’s duty to deliver the sheets, but Bokuto always focused on what he enjoyed. Akaashi could only remember Bokuto in this room when the team had gathered to watch their brief playtime on the news. This was Bokuto, after all. He was always blazing ahead, eyes focused upwards, and Akaashi was the one who followed, writing in his notebooks, gathering his discards, gazing at the ground.
The student said something about Tokyo University. Akaashi walked into the hallway.
Outside, somebody had been building a snowman. It was taller than Akaashi. Behind the snowman, Bokuto emerged.
“Good timing!” Bokuto jogged towards him, holding out small pebbles in his cupped hands. “Get on my back, Akaashi! I gotta give the snowman a face.”
“How did you build this?” Akaashi squinted against the snowflakes.
“I rolled the snow,” Bokuto said.
“It’s too big for you to have built on your own.”
“Maybe,” Bokuto said, “but that’s what I did. So climb on my back!” Akaashi had to awkwardly bundle the pebbles into his sweater vest, the wool bulging with sharp rocks. Bokuto lifted him close to the snowman, unwieldy enough that Akaashi clutched onto the slippery iced sides. His fingers crunched into the snowman’s middle body. The snow landed on his hair, his neck, his shoulders, and melted into quiet water.
“You didn’t have to wait for me,” Akaashi said. He shoved the pebble into the smallest round ball.
“Of course I’ll wait for you,” Bokuto said, almost laughing. Akaashi pressed the second pebble beside the first, thumb flat against the side. In the teacher’s room, they must have still been speaking about the admission rates of Tokyo University.
Liar, he thought. Liar.
“We should do a gift exchange,” Bokuto had said, water bottle to his mouth, “but everyone should get me a gift, too.”
“That defeats the purpose, Bokuto-san.”
“No it doesn’t! Instead of getting the whole team something, you just get something for two people. Someone else and more importantly, me.”
The cropping of holiday décor began earlier each year. Akaashi browsed through the gift selection. A reindeer hat, a plastic miniature sleigh, a tiny tree wreathed in tinier lights. He picked up a snow globe with a perfect replica of the nearby train station. Small miniature figurines walked calmly through the watery world, unmoved by the shaking or the damp flakes covering their entire heads. One shook her tiny umbrella briskly, and then disappeared through the doors.
If he bought something for Bokuto, that would be admitting too much. But if he didn’t, then Bokuto would complain. Maybe he would grow sulky, maybe he would throw a tantrum, and the rest of the team would look to Akaashi. And maybe Akaashi’s quivering hand would reveal something when he knelt beside him, maybe his voice would let his secret slip.
A store flyer was pasted on the bulletin board. They were pushing the romantic imagery for the winter holidays, hearts fluttering beneath crystalline snow. The only holiday where he saw more hearts on advertisements would be Valentine’s Day, which he associated with the last rush of confessions before graduation. And if Akaashi Keiji was anything, he was not desperate. He was not keening or fraught with despair.
No, he was simply weighing how prepared he would appear if he bought mittens compared to a notebook, the utility of the items versus Bokuto’s potential reaction, the way the team would look at him with either admiration or suspicion if he produced something so readily available for Bokuto’s pleasure.
He only wanted a gift that would not cast ripples on their relationship.
But sometimes, he would pinch the calendar on his desk and feel the thin pages slip out of his hand.
Konoha was shoving Bokuto’s shoulders downwards. Saru tried to thrust a pen into Bokuto’s hand while Washio held up the textbook. It was like watching concerned parents dote on their rambunctious grade-schooler, which Akaashi supposed was accurate.
“I don’t want to,” Bokuto complained.
“Do your homework by yourself, then!” Komi pointed to the book. “Look, we’re even going to help you. I’m not going to sleep or anything. Well, maybe a bit.”
For most of the time, they would leave the rest to Akaashi. But the third-year curriculum was different and difficult, and Akaashi was only there on Bokuto’s insistence. He sat in the corner with a book in his lap, though he stared outside the window, watching the snow fall upwards and back into the sky. Some even caught on the streetlamps before they melted and ran in rivulets off the surface.
The biggest difference between a third-year and a second-year wasn’t so much the schoolwork, the friends, or even the height. It was simply that Bokuto had spent a year in high school without him, and Akaashi would spend a year without Bokuto, too.
“Akaashi, do something!” Bokuto had broken free and scrambled across the room. He huddled behind Akaashi’s chair, hands gripped tight on his shoulders. Akaashi could feel his breath brushing against his neck and the way his hands would squeeze, like a flinch, when Washio rose from his seat.
“He’s not on your side, Bokuto!”
“He is, he is. Akaashi will protect me!”
“From your homework?”
Bokuto’s thumb was pressed against the side of Akaashi’s bare neck. Akaashi could feel the rough callus, the way it twitched against his sensitive skin. He hated how much the touch electrified him, and the way Bokuto was so careless. He never thought about how Akaashi would feel when he hugged him, or sat beside him, or snored next to his ear, or offered half-eaten granola bars, or grinned up at him.
When Akaashi was captain, he would be better than that.
Akaashi rose from his chair, grabbing his backpack. Bokuto toppled over, entangled with the chair.
“Wait, Akaashi! Don’t leave!” Bokuto was calling, but the other third-years had descended upon him with the textbook and half-crumpled paper test paper.
But Akaashi didn’t feel guilty when he swung open the club room door and climbed down the steps.
The snow was falling down again, properly dusting over the bushes. A tree rustled. The shadowy leaves moved like hundreds of birds, pulling to escape the branches.
In the empty classroom, Bokuto wiggled a pen between his nose and mouth. It slipped one way, then the other, a handlebar mustache with a refillable center.
“I’m bored,” Bokuto whined.
“This is something the captain is supposed to do,” Akaashi said, head bent down to record the new notes. He read the last sentence of his notes for the third time. Bokuto’s hand was curled close to his. He tried to read the sentence again.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Then would you look at—”
“It’s boring!” Bokuto dropped the pen into his hand and stretched out along the desk.
“Please pay attention,” Akaashi said harshly. “This is all we have left.” Not even three years, but two. Not even one year, but a few months. So Akaashi wasn’t a coward—he was simply being practical and pragmatic. He wasn’t afraid, but sensible. If he swallowed everything down his throat, letting the shards claw at the inside of his neck, then eventually he would feel better. And he had to think about Bokuto, too, who must feel happier in his ignorance. If Akaashi handed the mittens over as a gift, theoretically, if he had mittens to give, then wouldn’t Bokuto feel he must use them in the few months before graduation? But then after graduation, what would he do with them? Wouldn’t that burden him? Wouldn’t that burden Akaashi, too? Those mittens, still warm where Bokuto had touched them? But if Akaashi turned away, if Akaashi could only wait, then he would turn around and there would be a new team, a fresh start.
Akaashi clenched a fist around his pencil.
“I’m bored,” Bokuto said. “Let’s go see the whales.”
“What?”
But Bokuto was already standing up, slinging his bag on his shoulder. He swept the notebooks into Akaashi’s open backpack and zipped it up too far on the right side. Akaashi was left only holding his pencil, and then Bokuto was already walking out the classroom door, backpack dangling from his hand. When Akaashi caught up with him at the school doors, Bokuto handed him the backpack and pointed to the congealing clouds to the east.
“Over there,” he said. “It’ll clear up. Let’s go, Akaashi!”
“We shouldn’t go far,” Akaashi said.
Bokuto hummed, hands stuck in his pockets.
Akaashi knew the road to the station. He passed by the same stores and the same fountain, the flapping banners and the chalkboard signs covered in snow. The plant that sang a lullaby, the empty crates that nobody had touched. But he didn’t recognize the small dot on the map where Bokuto pointed, and the station’s name on his ticket was something he’d only seen in passing on brochures.
“Have you been here before?” Akaashi asked.
“No,” Bokuto said. “But it’ll be good, you’ll see.”
The late train was still crammed enough that Akaashi stood by a window. Bokuto’s arm lightly pressed against his shoulder. Shopping bags rustled. A briefcase was carefully held. Someone cradled a cardboard box filled with small furry creatures, their purple tongues flickering from the half-closed cover. Akaashi watched the station disappear. All the familiar was becoming unfamiliar, the name brand stores blending into elaborate houses and strange plants with stranger flowers. With each passing second, the train flew faster across the railing and was taking him away from the school, the gym, his house. The places that he knew.
They left the train at a smaller, older station. The lit-up posters were like window panes against the station wall. Akaashi took the short escalator while Bokuto took the stairs, two at a time, until they broke free into the cold. It wasn’t snowing. The clouds had begun to part.
“We can’t go far,” Akaashi repeated.
“We’re not at school anymore, right?” Bokuto walked backwards down the small road, not even paved. The houses in the distance were sharp triangles, unnatural mountains.
“We will be tomorrow.”
“But not today!” Bokuto twisted around. “Oh, that looks like a good place.” Bokuto jogged to a short, grassy slope, sliding down with his feet first, hands held out behind him. The field below smelled too much like hay, something so fresh and strange that Akaashi placed a hand over his nose to breathe through his fingers. His backpack felt heavy and the station was too far away. Even if they started back now, they would still only manage a few hours of sleep. And Bokuto was staring up at the sky, no intention of heading back.
“Oh! I think I see it! Look, Akaashi!” Bokuto pointed up. Akaashi reluctantly tilted his head upwards. The night sky was silent. There was a smattering of stars, like someone carelessly tossed a few weak and pitiful lights into the sky, barely enough to even glow.
“There’s nothing there,” Akaashi said. “They said only a few people in the entire world would be able to see them, Bokuto-san. It’s unlikely that we’re part of the few.”
“But I see it,” Bokuto said. “It’s right there!”
“You can look at something and never see it,” Akaashi said, bitterly. “We should head back. It’s getting late. You haven’t done your homework, and I should study more for my quiz.”
“It’s fine,” Bokuto said, half-singing, and Akaashi gripped his fists tight against his sides.
“It might be fine for you, but I have things to do,” Akaashi said, feeling the pulsing waves inside him. “If you’re not going back, then I will. My backpack is heavy and it’s already late.”
“If it’s heavy,” Bokuto said, still staring at the sky, “then put it down. It’ll still be there, don’t worry.”
“No, it won’t. It won’t still be there. It’ll go somewhere. It won’t be there. I won’t get it back.”
“Sometimes I put stuff down and I usually find it again in my locker,” Bokuto said, shrugging.
“That’s because I put it there.” Akaashi’s nails bit into his palms.
“Then I’ll put your backpack in your locker! You just have to ask, Akaashi.”
“It’s not—”
“There, there!” Bokuto sprang across the field, crossing in a few steps to rejoin him. Akaashi was twisted to face upwards, Bokuto’s chin notched on his shoulder. Bokuto raised an arm to the sky.
“I don’t see anything,” Akaashi said. “I’m going home.”
“Akaashi,” Bokuto whispered, “why don’t you look?”
Akaashi relented. One last time, one last weakness. At the very least, he could enjoy the way Bokuto leaned on his back. He followed the gray line of Bokuto’s jacket, the way the cuffs still were half-rolled to his forearm, the line of his finger. Bokuto was pointing to a second moon. It was similar to the first, but bigger, hanging like a thick coin in the sky. And slowly, slowly, the shadows of the golden moon were shifting, waxing crescent, waning gibbous. Like an eye, blinking.
“Oh,” Akaashi said.
The river of stars parted into a drifting pectoral fin. The bursts of gaseous whites and blankets of deep blue and swirls of purplish lavender gave way to the shape of a moving flipper, a carefully intricate stitched scar in the sky. The Winter Triangle was a crown, the other constellations swallowed into the peerless belly and shining through layers of gaseous blubber and dust clouds. Comets etched along the long throat grooves, the long wispy tails following the billowing dip of the dust and ice. Stars burned like barnacles over the gargantuan crest, the hard calcareous shells replaced by the halo of prominences and coronas that protected the burning gas inside.
The twinned flukes, notched in the middle, moved with deliberate slowness. The meteoroids tossed from the massive rise tumbled and became engulfed in flames against the atmosphere. The clouds rolled away at the slow thrash, condensation lumping together and shaping into continents. It moved with such slowness that he thought it would take a millennium for the astronomical creature to finally reach another planet, that it must take years for them to witness a single gulp from a single breath. In the icy cold brushing against his cheeks, eyes wide and trying to absorb all the light from the stars, he thought he finally had time to breathe.
“Hello!” Bokuto called out, thrusting both hands into the sky. It was comical, laughable, idiotic, and Akaashi listened so intently for the smallness of his being to yell out, cheerfully, in greetings to an animal created from galaxies and centuries. And, partially, he thought he could believe it. He could believe that space could hear Bokuto, with Bokuto’s loud voice and the way his hands reached out to touch the sky.
Akaashi’s lungs burned with the cold air until they hurt, aching under the frost. The grass shivered under his sneakers, the trees bristling at the gusts, the sky whale still travelling and skimming the twisted iron and copper and silicate into its mouth, baleen straining.
“You see it? Beautiful, right?” Bokuto leapt into the air, fingers still distant from the whale, but Akaashi thought he saw the clouds unfurl at the trails of his hands.
It was beautiful, the bioluminescent glow of the stars that burned light years away from their planet and the eruption of the grin on Bokuto’s face, until he was showing all his teeth and his eyes were squeezed tightly shut, arms thrust outward and hitching the cuffs even higher, tie loose and knotted to a side.
The cold was stinging Akaashi’s cheeks. Bokuto dropped his hands to his sides, and Akaashi stepped beside him. In Bokuto’s wide eyes, he could see the celestial wisps reflected in gold. He wondered how long it must take for the sky whale’s heart to echo a single beat, while its wide open mouth swallowed the solar clouds throughout centuries.
Akaashi reached out, tentatively, until he felt Bokuto’s cold hand. He numbly entangled their fingers together and stared up at the sky. He could feel Bokuto turn to look at him, but he focused on his breathing, the air molecules around him. After a long second, Bokuto turned back to look at the stars. Breathe, Akaashi reminded himself in the gaps of his heartbeats. Breathe. There was still time to breathe.
He could feel his hand being squeezed in return.
Above them, the sky whale swam in the milky ocean, flukes stroking through the winter stars.