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In the beginning, before the titles and the resentment, they were just three first-years in oversized jerseys, keeping the bench warm for Kitagawa Daiichi.
Back then, the hierarchy was simple. Oikawa Tooru and Iwaizumi Hajime were the undisputed kings of the court, and everyone else was just trying to keep up. For Kindaichi and Kageyama, watching the third-years play was like watching magic.
They were closer, in those early days. While Kunimi sat at the edge of the bench, sighing heavily and complaining about the temperature of the gym, Kindaichi and Kageyama would practically vibrate with shared excitement.
"Did you see that cross-court spike?!" Kindaichi would whisper-yell, gripping the fabric of his sweatpants.
"The toss was perfect," Kageyama would reply, his dark eyes wide and shining with an intense, unblinking focus. "Oikawa-san masked his setup until the absolute last millisecond. I'm going to try that tomorrow."
They geeked out together. They stayed late after practice, Kindaichi happily chasing down Kageyama's erratic, experimental tosses. Kunimi would watch them from the gym doors, feeling a prickle of jealousy at their easy, obsessive camaraderie, ultimately choosing to leave them behind to go home and play video games.
But even then, the foundation was uneven. Kageyama possessed a raw, terrifying talent that the coaches couldn't ignore. While Kindaichi and Kunimi strictly observed from the sidelines, Kageyama was occasionally subbed in to serve or set. He was pulling ahead, and he didn't even realize he was leaving them behind.
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By their second year, Oikawa and Iwaizumi had graduated junior high, and the dynamic completely fractured.
Kageyama became the starting setter. He was brilliant. The murmurs in the gymnasium changed from local gossip to serious high school recruiters lingering in the bleachers, pointing their clipboards at the dark-haired boy with the flawless form.
Kageyama hadn't changed. He was the exact same blunt, volleyball-obsessed idiot he was in his first year. But the people around him had changed.
Kindaichi’s shared excitement slowly curdled into a heavy, suffocating jealousy. It was exhausting to stand next to a genius, constantly reminded of your own average limits. Meanwhile, Kunimi’s lingering annoyance solidified into active dislike. He hated Kageyama’s demanding pace. He hated that Kageyama didn't understand when they were tired.
Kageyama couldn't read the subtle shifts in the air. He just kept setting the ball, assuming that because they were all playing volleyball, they were all on the same page.
🏐🏐🏐
Junior high students are notoriously cruel, mostly because they learn how to hide their cruelty behind subtext.
In their third year, the social landscape of the locker room became a minefield of sarcasm, passive-aggressiveness, and layered jokes. Kageyama, who took every word at its exact, literal face value, was constantly stepping on the mines. He didn't understand the jokes. He couldn't read the room when the team wanted to slack off. He alienated people simply by existing on a different frequency.
Eventually, his mother noticed the deep, frustrated exhaustion settling over him. She took him to a clinic.
Autism Spectrum Disorder.
To Kageyama, the diagnosis was just some data. It was a logical explanation for why the world felt so loud and why human interaction felt like a game where everyone else had the rulebook except him.
A few days later, sitting alone in the clubroom after practice, Kageyama told Kindaichi. He didn't tell him for pity. He told him because, despite the growing distance between them, Kageyama still subconsciously viewed Kindaichi as his first-year bench-buddy. His best friend.
"Oh," Kindaichi had said, blinking in surprise. He rubbed the back of his neck, looking at Kageyama’s stiff posture. For a brief, shining moment, the old camaraderie flared up. "Well. You're still just Kageyama to me. Don't worry about it."
Kageyama had nodded, a tiny bit of tension leaving his shoulders, and smiled.
But the camaraderie didn't last.
A week later, after a particularly grueling practice that left everone, except Kageyama, tired and bitter, Kindaichi snapped. Seeking validation and wanting to vent, he shared Kageyama’s private diagnosis with Kunimi in the changing room.
"Well, that figures," Kunimi scoffed, tying his shoes with a cynical sneer. "He’s a freak obsessed with this fucking game. No wonder he doesn't understand normal human emotions. It’s like talking to a robot."
Kindaichi hesitated. A part of him knew it was wrong to use Kageyama's vulnerability against him. But another part of him—the part that was intensely jealous, the part that craved Kunimi's validation and wanted to be part of the "normal" crowd—won out.
"Yeah," Kindaichi agreed, laughing weakly. "He really is like a robot."
🏐🏐🏐
Kageyama was autistic. He wasn't blind or deaf.
He heard the whispers. He noticed the eye rolls when he spoke. He saw the way Kindaichi and Kunimi would look at each other and snicker when he took a sarcastic comment literally.
The realization was a slow, agonizing process. They didn't like him. They thought he was a freak. The only time they didn't actively mock his personality was when his sets perfectly aligned with their palms and scored points for the team.
If they only value my sets, Kageyama's brain concluded, building a massive, impenetrable wall of armor to survive the isolation, then I will make my sets absolute. I won't care about their feelings. They don't care about mine.
His plays became selfish. His demands became harsher. He stopped trying to understand his teammates and started trying to control them. He became the Dictator King, masking his deep, agonizing loneliness with terrifying arrogance.
Kageyama’s tosses had become impossible, a frantic, desperate attempt to force the team to keep up with his pace. The atmosphere on the court became toxic.
He set the ball, an impossibly fast, sharp trajectory meant for Kindaichi.
Kindaichi didn't jump.
The ball hit the floor with a hollow, echoing thud.
Kageyama turned around, his chest heaving, his eyes wide with shock. They weren't just rejecting his sets anymore; they were completely, utterly rejecting him.
Kageyama was benched. Kitagawa Daiichi lost the game.
🏐🏐🏐
Kageyama never returned to the club.
For two weeks, Kindaichi walked past the unoccupied gym locker, telling himself he didn't care. He told himself Kageyama was a tyrant who deserved to be abandoned. He was better off without him.
But one afternoon, the head coach pulled Kindaichi into the faculty office. The coach looked deeply exhausted.
"You need to clear out Kageyama's locker, Kindaichi," the coach said quietly, handing him a master key. "He won't be coming back for the rest of the semester."
"Because we lost?" Kindaichi asked, a defensive, bitter bite in his voice.
The coach shook his head, looking down at his desk. "No. His father and grandfather died in an accident during the finals... It's... well. It's a family tragedy. His mother said he won't come back and won't continue to Aoba Johsai with the rest of you next year."
The words hit Kindaichi like a physical blow to the stomach.
His father... and his grandfather... The man who had taught Kageyama volleyball.
Kindaichi’s mind raced backwards. The finals. Kageyama’s frantic, desperate sets. The wild look in his eyes. He was mourning his family, and desperately trying to hold onto the only thing he knew how to control—the ball.
"Why..." Kindaichi choked out, his vision blurring. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Well, aren't you two friends?" the coach asked.
Are they? Were they, ever?
Kindaichi walked out of the faculty office, the hallway spinning violently around him. He gripped the strap of his gym bag until his knuckles turned stark white, a heavy, nauseating weight settling into his chest.
He wondered if Kageyama had become a tyrant on his own, or if Kindaichi was the one who created him.
🏐🏐🏐
Seijoh had lost.
To the insufferable Karasuno.
Fucking Karasuno.
An hour later, the sharp sting of the loss had settled into a dull, heavy ache. Kindaichi was walking down the quiet back hallway of the stadium toward the vending machines, looking for a sports drink, when he heard a familiar, obnoxiously loud voice.
"I told you I could hit it! Even with their ace and Turnip-head blocking, I flew right over them!"
Kindaichi froze, his grip tightening on his gym bag. He stepped silently into the shadow of a concrete pillar.
A few yards away, standing near the glow of a vending machine, were Kageyama and his ridiculous, orange-haired middle blocker.
"You hit it out of bounds the first time, you dumbass," Kageyama grumbled. But there was no real heat in his voice. In fact, as Kindaichi watched, Kageyama reached out and handed the shorter boy a carton of strawberry milk, casually twisting the straw open for him first.
"That was a warm-up swing!" Hinata argued, taking the milk and happily bumping his shoulder directly into Kageyama’s chest. "And you still tossed to me again anyway!"
"Of course I did," Kageyama said simply. "You were open."
Kindaichi felt a strange, suffocating knot tighten in his throat.
In junior high, if someone messed up, Kageyama would have completely lost his mind. He would have started screaming. He would have sped up his tosses until they were impossible to hit, punishing his own spikers for not keeping up. But today, against Seijoh, Kageyama hadn't panicked, or screamed, or blamed.
He had just... trusted them.
Why? Kindaichi thought, a bitter, painful ache blooming in his chest. Why them?
Hinata suddenly glanced past Kageyama’s shoulder, his brown eyes locking onto the shadow behind the pillar. He blinked, instantly recognizing the Seijoh jacket and the "Turnip-head" hair.
The bubbly, relaxed demeanor vanished in a second. Hinata shifted his weight, stepping slightly in front of Kageyama. He crossed his arms, his chin tilting up in a fiercely protective, defensive glare. He looked like a tiny, orange guard dog fully prepared to bite.
Kageyama frowned, following Hinata’s line of sight. When he saw Kindaichi standing in the shadows, his posture went completely rigid.
The silence stretched, thick and agonizing.
"You want to fight?!" Hinata barked, suddenly marching forward with his fists raised.
Kageyama rolled his eyes, reached out, and casually caught the back of Hinata's shirt, hoisting him backward before he could gain any momentum. "Stop it, dumbass. You look like an angry chihuahua."
"Let me go! He's lurking! I'm going to bite his ankles!" Hinata squawked, swinging his arms wildly.
"It's fine," Kageyama interrupted softly. His voice lacked any volatile, defensive spikes. He placed a large, warm hand gently on Hinata’s shoulder, turning him slightly. "Go on ahead to the bus. I need a minute."
Hinata stopped struggling. He looked from Kageyama to Kindaichi, completely unwilling to leave his setter in a vulnerable position. But when he looked back into Kageyama’s dark eyes, he complied.
He let out a short, reluctant huff. "Fine. But if you aren't at the bus in five minutes, I'm coming back with Tanaka-san."
Kageyama’s lips twitched into the ghost of a fond smile. "I'll be there."
Hinata shot one last, highly threatening glare at Kindaichi before turning on his heel and jogging down the hall.
Once the squeak of Hinata's sneakers completely faded, Kindaichi finally took a hesitant step forward out of the shadows.
Kageyama turned back to face him. He didn't look arrogant. He didn't look angry. He just stood tall, waiting.
"It must take a lot of energy not to gloat to my face," Kindaichi spat, throwing the first punch to hide how entirely off-balance he felt. "You went and found a better team and you beat me. Happy?"
"I wasn't going to gloat," Kageyama said flatly, his brow furrowing as if the concept truly hadn't occurred to him. "And I didn't find a 'better' team. I found a team that forced me to realize I was playing the game wrong."
Kindaichi’s jaw clenched. The sharp sting of the loss mixed violently with the lingering ghosts of junior high, bubbling up into a messy, bitter resentment.
"I guess our team just wasn't good enough to make you want to change," Kindaichi muttered, his voice dripping with toxic self-pity. His fists trembled at his sides. "If we had just been better spikers, maybe you wouldn't have been such a tyrant, I guess that if we were faster-"
"Stop."
Kageyama’s voice wasn't a yell, but it carried the absolute, unshakeable authority of a setter taking control of the court.
Kindaichi snapped his mouth shut, his chest heaving.
Kageyama looked at him. He looked incredibly clear-headed.
"I know my behavior was wrong," Kageyama said, his voice steady and literal. "I was a tyrant. I am taking responsibility for that. I've wanted to apologize to you for a long time, and I am still sorry for how I pushed you on the court. But you don't get to stand there and put all the blame on me."
Kindaichi flinched, opening his mouth to argue, but Kageyama didn't let him.
"Do you remember when I got my autism diagnosis?" Kageyama asked.
The question hit Kindaichi like a bucket of ice water. The breath completely vanished from his lungs.
"I told you because I thought we were friends," Kageyama continued, his voice perfectly level, stating the facts exactly as he remembered them. "But after that, you changed. You started mocking me behind my back. You made fun of the way I talked, or when I didn't understand your jokes. You insulted me when I couldn't read the room."
"I—"
"The only time you and Kunimi stopped insulting me was when I was on the court," Kageyama said, his grip tightening slightly on his gym bag. "When the coaches recognized my skills. When I scored points. You hated me, but you liked my sets."
Kindaichi felt his knees go weak. He had no idea that Kageyama knew about all that.
"So I acted like it," Kageyama refused to let the reality be softened. "You made it clear that my personality was wrong, and the only thing that mattered was how I played. So I decided that if volleyball was the only acceptable part of me, I would make sure it was perfect. I stopped caring about your feelings, because you had already stopped caring about mine."
The silence in the hallway was deafening.
Kindaichi wondered when Kageyama had learned to communicate his feelings that well.
"I was a terrible teammate," Kageyama repeated softly. "But you were a terrible friend."
The weight of that championship—the bitter memory of turning his back on Kageyama's toss—had haunted him for months. He had held onto his anger because it was easier than dealing with the crushing guilt of knowing why Kageyama had isolated himself in the first place.
He could keep pretending that he hated Kageyama, but the guy in front of him was a completely different person. But most importantly, the truth was that he hated himself for what he have done.
Kindaichi let out a long, shuddering breath. The defensive tension completely collapsed, leaving him hollowed out.
"I'm sorry," Kindaichi choked out. His voice was a watery, wrecked whisper. "God, Kageyama... I'm so sorry."
Kageyama looked at him, calm.
"I stopped being angry about it a long time ago," Kageyama said simply. He held Kindaichi's gaze, offering him the very grace he had once been denied. "Maybe you should do the same."
Before the heavy, fragile peace between them could settle any further, a slow, deliberate clapping echoed from the far end of the hall.
Oikawa Tooru strolled down the hallway, his Seijoh jacket draped casually over his shoulders. His signature, infuriatingly charming smile was plastered on his face, but his brown eyes were unusually shadowed as he looked between the two former teammates. He had clearly heard enough of the conversation to connect his own guilty pieces of the puzzle.
"Well, well, well," Oikawa said quietly, stopping next to Kindaichi. He tilted his head, his gaze sliding over to Kageyama with a strange, complex mixture of regret and fierce pride. "Look how much you've grown, Tobio-chan."
Kageyama instantly bristled, his posture going rigid. "Oikawa-san."
"Relax, Tobio-chan, I'm not here to bite." Oikawa reached out and placed a hand on top of Kindaichi's head, ruffling the spiky hair like a parent comforting a distressed child. "Just came to pick up the big baby over here."
"I'm not a baby!" Kindaichi squawked, his voice cracking slightly. He hastily batted Oikawa's hand away, furiously scrubbing his sleeve over his tear-stained face to hide the evidence.
Oikawa just chuckled, letting his hand drop. But the breezy, teasing aura vanished a second later, replaced by an intense, suffocating competitive pressure. He stepped forward, closing the distance until he was standing just a few feet away from the Karasuno setter.
"You played like a real setter today," Oikawa said, his voice dropping an octave. "You finally found a team that understands you. I have to admit, it’s highly annoying."
Kageyama didn't flinch. He met Oikawa's glare with equal ferocity, entirely secure in who he was. "I'm going to keep getting better."
"Oh, I'm sure you will," Oikawa smirked, leaning in just a fraction. "But don't get arrogant. When we face each other again, on a professional stage, I will crush you."
Kageyama’s dark eyes blazed. The promise of a future battle—of a stage far beyond the walls of a high school gymnasium—sent a jolt of pure, unadulterated adrenaline through his veins. He didn't shrink under the weight of the Great King's declaration. He welcomed it.
"I look forward to it," Kageyama stated, his voice a low, absolute vow. "But I will still win."
Oikawa let out a sudden, genuine bark of laughter. He patted Kageyama firmly on the shoulder before stepping past him and dragging Kindaichi away.
"Don't lose to Shiratorizawa tomorrow, Tobio," Oikawa commanded, not looking back as he walked away. "I can only handle so much disappointment in one week."
"We won't lose," Kageyama promised the empty space between them.
Oikawa and Kindaichi walked down the hallway, leaving the Karasuno setter behind them. Kindaichi scrubbed his face with his sleeve, glancing over his shoulder one last time before rounding the corner.
At the far end of the hall, Hinata was peeking his head out, his wide eyes scanning the area for threats before he bounded back over to Kageyama's side.
Kindaichi turned to look back ahead when he saw the short spiker take the setter's hand in his.
It really wasn't his business.