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“Hello?”
His voice reached the walls and bounced back to him. No one answered. Safe to go in, then.
Yamaguchi peered right and left and carefully stepped in the (seemingly) empty gymnasium. He had waited outside for a while until he saw the team leave, and then waited some more so he was sure that everyone had really left. You never know what kind of volleyball maniac could stay behind and keep practicing! Yamaguchi didn’t want to meet that person, if they were there.
And luckily, it seemed that they weren't.
A quick look at the room had him already taken aback by how big it all was. The ceiling was so tall, and the field was so wide, and he was sure that if his steps were a little bit louder, they would echo.
It all intimidated him. That's why he had waited for the team to leave before stepping in. He knew they didn't lock the gym because the basketball club came to practice twenty minutes later. For a while now, he had been eyeing the volleyball club, secretly hoping that one day, he would gather the strength and the courage to join them. He told himself that his first step didn't have to be facing all those big, scary kids ; instead he'd opted for a sneaky visit to the gym, so he'd get used to it.
The empty room weighed heavily on his shoulders. He looked around. The nets weren't up - obviously, since practice was over, the balls were safely locked up in the storage room. He couldn't really do anything but look around.
Now that he thought about it, his idea did sound kind of stupid.
Well, he could just leave now, couldn't he?
He heard the gym door creaking and someone stepping in (ah! So he was right! Stepping loudly did make an echo!).
He felt his heart practically bursting in his chest. That was not planned! It couldn't be the basketball team, he came in having calculated he had ten minutes ahead of him, and it had definitely been less than five. The volleyball team had left, he'd seen them, he'd counted them to see if they were all there. They'd left!
“What are you doing here?”
Much like his own a few moments earlier, the voice filled the room, touched every wall and obediently returned to where it had come from. Silence followed. Yamaguchi was frozen. He didn't dare turn around and face whoever was talking to him. He didn't recognise that voice from anywhere.
“Hey, I'm talking to you.”
Okay, he couldn't just not answer and pretend he wasn't there. He was the only person standing in an enormous, empty gym. He was as visible as an angry zit in the middle of the forehead.
“I uh…” he attempted, his brain frantically working to find a worthy excuse. “I lost my…”
“Oh,” the voice interrupted, sounding less aggressive this time. “The glasses, yeah? We found them earlier, they're on the bench.”
Yamaguchi’s brain registered what the voice had just said, not believing how lucky that was at first. He praised every god whose name he knew and headed towards the bench, spotting a pair of bright red, enormous glasses.
He picked them up, a bit hesitantly, and put them on. Then, he turned around.
I can't see anything, he thought.
The person that owned these had to be blind. He started walking toward the exit (or what he hoped was the exit, it looked more like a blurry patch of light), not knowing where the other person had gone. He hoped he wouldn't walk into them or something. He trusted he wouldn’t ; the exit was getting closer, and he could hear them moving things somewhere behind him, probably the storage room. He was gonna walk away freely and be able to forget this ever happened.
“Crap!” he heard, accompanied with a really loud thud and the unmistakable sound of multiple things falling over at the same time.
He instinctively turned around, but with the glasses on, he couldn’t make much out of it. He took them off, and he saw a blonde boy on the ground under a pile of gym supplies. He was staring straight at him.
He quickly put the glasses back on and kept walking to make it seem like nothing happened.
He walked straight into the wall.
The glasses fell off his face and crashed on the floor. Through his dizziness - he’d really gone for that wall, hadn’t he -, he noticed that they were broken.
“Are you okay?” the voice asked.
Yamaguchi turned around and was faced with the boy. He was walking towards him, having escaped the pile of things he’d been trapped in a few moments ago. Yamaguchi tried to swallow up the pain, to keep what little dignity he had left, but he wasn’t very convincing.
“Yes, I’m okay, it’s all good, don’t worry!” he said, while a lone tear escaped his eye and ran down his cheek.
“Your glasses are broken, though,” the blonde pointed out, looking halfway between pitiful and amused.
“Oh,” Yamaguchi let out. “My… glasses, yeah. They’re pretty broken.”
His pain had faded away a little, and his thoughts weren’t so clouded anymore. He was starting to realise he’d just stolen and then broken someone else’s glasses. That wasn’t something to be proud of.
“Want some help with that?” the boy offered.
Yamaguchi looked up at him, eyes wide.
“I don’t mind, I must have some tape in my bag, if you want to patch them up a little so you can go home.”
I don’t need them, Yamaguchi thought, they’re not mine! Why am I even here? This was a bad idea!
“So? What do you say?”
“They’re…” Yamaguchi began, a lump in his throat. “They’re not… They’re not actually my glasses…”
The boy grinned at him. Was he… making fun of him? That was just making the situation worse!
“I know,” the boy said, still giggling.
What?
“They’re my teammate’s, he forgot them here earlier.”
“Your teammate?”
“Yes, from the volleyball club.”
If that was even possible, Yamaguchi’s eyes grew even wider.
“So, I’m going to ask you again: what are you doing here?”
Yamaguchi blushed. That was a little embarrassing to admit. Even he thought that it was kind of ridiculous. This boy was already grinning at him, surely he would make fun of him for it. And if he was part of the volleyball club and he started making fun of him, that meant Yamaguchi could never, ever join it.
No, he was going to be honest. If it had to cost him his dream of joining the volleyball club, then so be it. Lying hadn’t gotten him anywhere so far.
“I wanted to… look around.”
The boy raised an eyebrow.
“Well, that’s not really it. I kind of… want to join the volleyball club. But I was a bit scared of having to meet the other kids, so I told myself that if I… If I went here first, and took this step by step, then it would be less scary.”
He didn’t dare look at him. His eyes were riveted on his toes. He was just waiting for the other boy to laugh, to make fun of him, to say something, and then he could just leave and go hide under his bedsheets and never come back.
“You do?”
The question wasn’t a snarky remark, nor was it disdainful. What Yamaguchi heard was genuine curiosity. He looked up.
“Um, yes.”
“I’ve got to admit, I understand, about the other kids. They’re a bit loud. But the captain’s nice, and he’s been looking for new members recently. I could tell him, if you want. He could come and see you, you don’t have to come during practice if you don’t want to.”
That was… really nice? This boy that was standing in front of him, that he’d never talked to, was being nice to him after he’d made a fool of himself and lied to him. Yamaguchi didn’t really know what to do with himself. He really wanted to say yes.
“So, what do you say?”
“Yes! I mean, thank you, I’m… It’s that I’m... a bit shy, so thank you.”
The boy grinned again.
“Yes, I would have guessed. What’s your name then?”
“Yamaguchi,” he answered. “And… what’s… your name?’’
‘’Tsukishima. Well, I’ll talk to him then, that’s settled.”
Yamaguchi smiled.
“And for the glasses…” Tsukishima continued, looking over to where they were lying, little shards of glass scattered all around.
“I’ll pay for them!” Yamaguchi affirmed. “It’s the least I can do.”
Tsukishima raised an eyebrow and huffed, his grin still stuck to his face.
“Good then.”
They looked at each other, creating an awkward silence.
“I’ll go then,” Yamaguchi told him, “sorry again, and thank you again, and um… See you!”
“Yeah, that,” Tsukishima answered.
Yamaguchi left the gym, but once he was outside, he turned around. The other boy was still looking at him. Yamaguchi gave him a little wave and walked away, his head full of thoughts about the volleyball club and his dream finally coming true. Visiting the gym hadn’t been such a bad idea, after all.