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The hallway behind the second-year classrooms was usually quiet during lunch, which was exactly why Kageyama liked it. He had just bought his carton of milk from the vending machine and was looking for a peaceful place to drink it when he heard the voices.
"Are you seriously crying right now? Over a notebook?"
"Look at him, he's pathetic. Real men don't cry. Especially over stupid drawings."
Kageyama frowned, the harsh, mocking tone grating against his ears. He turned the corner and found three second-year boys cornering a smaller first-year. The first-year had messy hair and was frantically trying to gather scattered pages of a sketchbook from the floor. His shoulders were shaking, and he was, in fact, crying.
Kageyama didn't really understand social dynamics, and he usually avoided confrontation outside of the volleyball court. But he did understand fairness, and he hated unnecessary noise.
He walked over, his tall frame immediately casting a shadow over the group.
"Hey," Kageyama said, his voice flat and loud.
The three bullies turned around. They had to crane their necks up to look at Kageyama. With his sharp features, his intimidating 181-centimeter height, and his natural resting scowl, he looked absolutely terrifying without even trying.
"What do you want, first-year?" one of the bullies scoffed, though he took a small step back.
"You're being too loud," Kageyama stated bluntly, taking a sip of his milk. "And you are factually incorrect."
The bullies blinked, completely thrown off guard. "Huh?"
"You said men don't cry," Kageyama explained slowly, as if he were talking to a group of particularly slow children. "That is stupid. It's a natural stress response. Also, our ace is one of the tallest guys in the school, and he cries like twice a week. Hinata cries when he gets spiked in the face. It happens all the time."
The bullies stared at him, entirely unsure of how to handle this bizarre, deadpan logic. Kageyama just stared back, his blue eyes icy and completely unblinking. It was the exact same "Murder King" glare he used on opposing blockers.
"Whatever, man. Let's just go, he is a fucking weirdo," the leader muttered, thoroughly creeped out. The three of them quickly shoved their hands in their pockets and hurried down the hallway.
Kageyama watched them leave, satisfied that the noise had stopped. He looked down at the smaller boy, who was still kneeling on the floor, clutching his crumpled pages and staring up at Kageyama with wide, tear-filled eyes.
Kageyama awkwardly crouched down, picked up a stray pencil that had rolled near his shoe, and held it out.
"Are you okay?" Kageyama asked, his voice returning to its normal, quiet volume.
The boy took the pencil with trembling hands. "Y-yes. Thank you. I'm Ito. From the Manga Club."
"I'm Kageyama," he replied simply. He stood back up, gave a small nod, and walked away to finish his milk. He assumed that was the end of it.
It was not the end of it.
The very next day, Kageyama was sitting at his desk, staring blankly out the window as he waited for the lunch bell to ring. The moment the bell chimed, a chair scraped across the floor and was placed directly next to his desk.
Kageyama turned his head. Ito was sitting there, a brightly colored bento box in his lap and a sketchbook tucked under his arm.
"Hi, Kageyama-kun," Ito beamed.
Kageyama blinked. Usually, people avoided his desk. Even Hinata usually dragged him outside or to the gym. "Hi."
"I hope you don't mind if I sit here," Ito said, already opening his bento. "The manga club room is locked on Tuesdays, and I wanted to talk to you."
Kageyama didn't know how to tell him to go away, so he just nodded and pulled out the lunch his mother had packed him.
For the first twenty minutes, Kageyama just ate his food while Ito talked. Ito talked a lot. But unlike the chaotic, overlapping noise of the classroom, Ito’s voice was steady and focused. He talked about shading techniques, panel layouts, and different types of ink. Kageyama didn't understand ninety percent of what he was saying, but he found that he actually didn't mind the company. It was kind of nice to just sit and listen to someone talk about something they were incredibly passionate about without being expected to respond.
"Anyway, I've been working on this new spread," Ito said, suddenly sounding a little shy. He patted the cover of his sketchbook. "Those guys yesterday were making fun of it, but... would you want to see it?"
Kageyama swallowed his bite of rice. "Okay."
Ito carefully opened the book and slid it across Kageyama's desk.
Kageyama looked down. He didn't know what he was expecting—maybe some simple stick figures or basic doodles.
Instead, he was staring at a massive, double-page spread of an intense action scene. The characters were drawn with incredible, dynamic detail. The perspective was forced, making it look like the protagonist was flying directly off the page. The ink lines were sharp, fast, and aggressive. It looked professional.
Kageyama’s eyes widened slightly. He leaned closer to the book, his brain immediately recognizing the sheer movement captured on the paper.
"This is really good," Kageyama said, his voice dropping into a tone of absolute, blunt sincerity.
Ito exhaled a shaky breath, his shoulders dropping in relief. "Really?"
"Yeah," Kageyama said, pointing to the motion lines trailing behind the main character. "It looks fast. The way you drew his muscles... it actually looks like he's jumping. It's accurate."
Ito’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. "I spent three hours studying anatomy books just to get that knee joint right!"
"It worked," Kageyama confirmed, handing the book back.
From that day on, it became a routine.
Two or three times a week, the manga artist would pull up a chair next to the intimidating volleyball setter. The rest of the class would watch in total bewilderment as Kageyama Tobio, the famously terrifying "King of the Court," sat peacefully drinking his milk while Ito excitedly showed him his latest storyboards.
It was a surprisingly productive partnership. By the second week, Ito started asking Kageyama for advice for his sports manga. Kageyama would share his expertise on athletics anatomy, and Ito would furiously scribble notes and redraw the pose perfectly. By the third week, Kageyama had started instinctively buying two cartons of milk from the vending machine, wordlessly sliding the strawberry-flavored one onto Ito's desk before sitting down.
By the fourth week, the weather had turned unseasonably warm, so they migrated outside.
They were sitting under the shade of a large cherry blossom tree near the courtyard, Kageyama was eating his lunch in comfortable silence, and Ito was doodling. A few meters away, a group of first-year girls was playing Daruma-san ga koronda.
"Daruma-san ga... koronda!" one of the girls shouted, spinning around. The others froze mid-step, laughing as they tried to hold their precarious poses.
Kageyama focused on his lunch, but when he glanced over, he realized Ito wasn't drawing. The artist’s pencil was hovering uselessly over his paper, his chin resting in his hand as he stared dreamily at the girls. Specifically, at a girl with short brown hair who was currently wobbling on one leg.
He let out a soft, wistful sigh.
Kageyama swallowed his food. "Why are you making that noise?"
Ito blinked, his face immediately flushing a bright, furious red. "Ah! N-nothing! Just... thinking." He cleared his throat, suddenly looking very interested in his sketchbook. After a moment, he peeked back up at Kageyama. "Hey, Kageyama-kun? Do you... like, anybody?"
Kageyama tilted his head. "I like my mom. And I tolerate my sister."
"No, no," Ito laughed softly. "I mean, do you have a crush on anyone? Like, do you like anyone romantically?"
Kageyama frowned. Romance was something that happened in movies, not something that applied to a volleyball court. "I don't think so. What does it actually mean?"
Ito put his pencil down, leaning back against the trunk of the tree. "Well, it’s like... when you're around them, your heart beats a lot faster. Sometimes your stomach does flips, or your face gets hot for no reason."
Kageyama paused, his chopsticks hovering over his bento box. A strange flutter knocking against his ribs. The heat rushing to the tips of his ears. He had blamed that on motion sickness.
"You also pay a lot of attention to them," Ito continued, looking back toward the courtyard. "You notice the little things they do. And when you're with them, things just feel... better. Like they make the noisy parts of the world quiet down."
Like slipping beneath the surface of the ocean. Kageyama stared at his lunch, completely frozen. The logical, analytical part of his brain took all the physical data he had collected over the past few weeks—the aquarium, the bus ride, the static in his head vanishing when they practiced sign language—and finally processed the result.
"Oh," Kageyama said flatly.
"Yeah," Ito sighed. "It's nice. But it also sucks when you know nothing will happen."
Kageyama blinked, pulling himself out of his earth-shattering epiphany. "Why wouldn't anything happen? Do you have a crush on one of those girls?"
"Mhm. Mio-san," Ito mumbled, nodding toward the girl with the short brown hair who had just won the game. "But she is way out of my league."
Kageyama frowned, his eyebrows pulling together in genuine confusion. "League? Like a division ranking? Is she a third-year?"
"No, she's a first-year like us," Ito explained, giving a self-deprecating smile. "It's just an expression. It means she's really pretty, and popular, and I'm just... the weird kid in the manga club who gets picked on. She wouldn't look twice at me. We aren't on the same level."
"That is stupid," Kageyama stated bluntly, setting his chopsticks down harshly.
Ito flinched. "Hey—"
"No, it doesn't make sense," Kageyama interrupted, fixing Ito with an intense stare. "You don't lose a match before you step on the court. If you don't serve the ball, you score zero points. How do you know she won't look at you if you haven't even tried to get her attention?"
Ito stared at him, his mouth slightly open. "I... I mean, I guess statistically..."
"Statistically, if you do nothing, your success rate is zero percent," Kageyama confirmed, crossing his arms. "If she says no, then you lose. But deciding you already lost because of an imaginary 'league' makes no sense."
Ito looked from Kageyama, to the girls in the courtyard, and back again. Slowly, a small, determined smile started to form on his face. "You know, Kageyama-kun... you have a really weird way of giving pep talks. But you're kind of right."
"I am right," Kageyama said simply.
Ito picked up his pencil again, his posture sitting up a little straighter. "Okay. Maybe I'll try to talk to her next week. What about you?"
"What about me?"
"Your crush," Ito grinned, nudging Kageyama's arm with his elbow. "When I was describing it, you totally spaced out. Who is it? Is she from another class?"
Kageyama looked away, staring intensely at a patch of grass. His chest was doing that horrible, warm fluttering thing again. He thought about bright orange hair, loud shouting, and hands clumsily signing the word for friends on a crowded bus.
"He's a middle blocker," Kageyama muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. "And he's a dumbass."
"What's a middle blocker?"
Kageyama rolled his eyes. He should really reconsider this friendship.