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In the first game of the Spring Qualifiers, Kindaichi Yuutarou landed wrong on his left ankle. It wasn’t bad, probably not even a sprain, but his coach had insisted on him going to the trainer’s center to get it checked out — out of an abundance of caution, he’d said. We’ll need you at your best for the next game.
Flattery does, in fact, work. Which is why Kindaichi finds himself sitting on a weird semi-cushioned table in a room full of weird semi-cushioned tables, waiting for the trainer to see him. The man and his assistant are apparently both tending to other players in other rooms, which presumably only contain more weird semi-cushioned tables. How many can they possibly need? There are four of them in this room alone. The only thing separating each of them is a thin curtain on a little ceiling rail — if they were gonna separate them anyway, why not just put a single table in each room? There can't possibly be that many injured players. Jeez.
He hears the door open, then, and perks up, but nobody comes to draw his curtain back. Instead, three shadows pass by on the other side, and he hears the rattle of a different curtain sliding along the rail. A voice that sounds vaguely familiar says, “Are you boys sure you’ll be okay? I can wait here with you until the trainer comes.”
“We’ll be fine, Takeda-sensei. Thank you for showing us here.”
Kindaichi freezes. That voice is a lot more than vaguely familiar.
His eyes narrow and his brow furrows without his knowledge. What is Kageyama doing here? Back in middle school, you couldn’t have gotten that guy to go to the trainer even if you paid him.
There’s the sound of the curtain drawing shut and the door closing, and Kindaichi thinks about saying something aloud, but noise coming from the other curtain makes him pause and listen.
There’s a heavy sigh, followed by a scraping on the floor that sounds like someone is either leaning or climbing on the cushioned table. “Are you actually stupid?” Says Kageyama’s disembodied voice, and for a mildly horrifying second, Kindaichi thinks he’s talking to him, and oh god, he is so not prepared for that.
Instead, though, an indignant huff comes from the other side. “Smarter than you,” grumbles a thick, nasally voice, and this one also strikes Kindaichi as familiar. Who the hell is there? And with Kageyama? Nobody goes anywhere with Kageyama — he doesn’t let them and they never want to, anyway. Why would whoever this is come with him to the trainer?
It’s Kageyama’s turn to huff. “I’m not the one taking serves to the face, dumbass.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose!”
“Shocking,” Kageyama mumbles, and whoever the other person is does a substantial amount of grumbling.
Wait, so— so the other person is the one who’s injured? That makes even less sense. It’s impossible to convince Kageyama to come to the trainer himself, let alone for the sake of someone else. That would mean him walking away from a volleyball court voluntarily, and that’s just… unheard of.
Kindaichi silences his thoughts as the voices start back up again — for some reason, he finds himself oddly curious about whatever’s going on here. He’s like a detective, almost, trying to figure everything out just by listening in. A fly on the wall, they call it, right?
“Oh— we got our geometry tests back,” says the nasally voice, and it occurs to Kindaichi that it probably sounds like that because of a nosebleed — getting hit in the face with a serve will do that. Damn, he’s actually a detective right now!
“What’d you get?” Kageyama says, and Kindaichi frowns. Why does he care? He doesn’t give a shit about things like that.
“What’d you get?” The other voice challenges. Something about that tone makes it sound even more familiar, but for some reason he still can’t place it.
He can hear the scowl in Kageyama’s voice. “I asked first.”
“Yeah, but you already got yours back. So you’ve known your score longer, so you have to tell me first.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Yes it does.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“Yes it does.”
“You’re a dumbass.”
“Uh, well, my geometry test doesn’t think so, so there.”
“There’s literally no way you got a good grade on that test.”
“Like you did, either. Tell me what you got.”
“I asked first!”
“Fine!” The second voice finally huffs. “But you can’t lie, okay?”
“I don’t lie!”
“Sure you don’t. I got a 46.”
There’s a weird, tense pause, followed by a strange murmuring. The second voice says, “Dude. Talk louder.”
“I got a 45, okay?!” Kageyama snaps. There’s an instant of silence before the second voice bursts into snorting laughter, muffled and choked by the blood in their nose. “Stop laughing, idiot, you’re gonna make it worse!” Kageyama grumbles.
“I win!” The second voice cheers.
“I can do a retake!”
“Doesn’t matter, the first one is the real one!”
Kageyama scoffs. “Whatever. Talk to me again when we take that Japanese test.”
“What Japanese test?”
“Isn’t there a Japanese test on Friday?”
“Maybe there is in your class.”
“I’m, like, 90% sure all first years are taking it.”
“But your 90% doesn’t mean anything. We just proved that you’re bad at math.”
“It’s only a one-point difference!”
“You play volleyball! You know how important one point can be!”
“Oh, is that why your receives suck? Because you can’t tell the difference between the ball and algebra?”
“What does that even mean!”
“It means you’re a dumbass, dumbass!”
This declaration is followed by a slapping sound, which is followed by several more slapping and thumping and shouting sounds. Kindaichi can only stare at the inside of his curtain with wide eyes. Is this, like… should he intervene, here? This is a physical altercation, right? Which is, like, a serious thing? Maybe he should report this to the tournament officials. Or Karasuno’s coach or something. Those guys are pretty suspicious of anyone in a Seijoh jacket, though… they might think he’s trying to sabotage them by getting their players in trouble. Plus, then the game wouldn’t feel like a fair fight, even with all the non-Kageyama talent they have on their team. There’s just—
The sounds have stopped.
Kindaichi looks up at this realization, wondering if the silence means that maybe somebody is dead or at least unconscious. Well… at least they’re already at the trainer, right?
“Oh, hey,” Says the second voice, which means Kageyama must be the dead one. That’s kind of hard to believe, so Kindaichi keeps listening. “Tanaka said he’d buy me a pork bun after the game, since he served into my face. Wanna come with?”
“Will he buy me one, too?” Kageyama’s voice says, apparently from beyond the grave.
“I mean, probably not.”
Kageyama huffs. “Fine, whatever. I’ll go.”
Sorry, um… what?
This… yeah, no. This makes no fucking sense. Kindaichi must be mishearing something. Either it hasn’t been Kageyama speaking this whole time, or his brain just scrambled all of those words into something totally incomprehensible.
There is no reality in which Kageyama Tobio would go out with his team after a game. Much less with someone he apparently just fist-fought. Jesus Christ, who is this guy? This is not the Kageyama that Kindaichi knows. Er… knew.
And isn’t that it’s own minefield.
Look, Kindaichi knows that he kind of turned his back on Kageyama at the end of middle school, there. But what else could he possibly have done? They hadn’t been friends, just teammates — Kageyama’s whole affect was never really conducive to the whole friends thing — and the guy was completely insufferable. He was an overbearing, arrogant, tyrannical player who refused to collaborate with his team. Having played one practice game and one real game against Karasuno, Kindaichi can say that maybe one of those things has changed: Kageyama will now, apparently, slightly alter his sets for the benefit of his teammates. But that was the only change Kindaichi noticed, and it just isn’t enough. The Kitagawa First volleyball team was right to stop tolerating the dictatorship under which they were playing; more than being right, it was the only thing they could do.
There had been no other choice. Okay? No other choice. Nothing they could’ve done to— to make things different.
This is different, some traitorous voice whispers in the back of Kindaichi’s head. This Kageyama is different.
He dismisses the thought.
“You didn’t have to come with me, y’know,” the nasally voice says.
“Shut up.”
“You’re missing warmups. The game starts in half an hour.”
“Shut up, Hinata. I can make my own damn decisions.”
Hinata… isn’t that the little orange freak? Hinata Shoyo, right? The one Kindaichi spoke to in the bathroom before the practice game — the one who came looking for Kageyama after it ended? The one who can actually hit his wildest sets and who can pull off that crazy impossible quick attack. Kageyama didn’t seem to like that kid during their scrimmage. Actually, he seemed to actively dislike him. And now he’s busy fist-fighting him and calling him a dumbass, but also coming with him to the trainer and agreeing to get pork buns after their game. There are a lot of mixed signals being shown here, and honestly, Kindaichi kind of has no idea what’s going on.
“Your decision is dumb,” the nasally one — uh, Hinata, he supposes — huffs.
“ You’re dumb,” Kageyama replies instantly. “And anyway, it’s just warmups. It’s not like we didn’t warm up at school this morning and after we got off the bus. It’s fine.”
“What, are you too tired, Crappyama?”
“No, I’m not, buttwad! You’re the one who got us benched!”
“Uh, no, I got me benched. You weren’t even on my side of the net.”
“Whatever. You know what I mean.”
Kindaichi expects that to be the (admittedly confusing) end of it, but Hinata has apparently decided to push. “No, I don’t! Not sure if you know this, but the team kind of needs you right now! They can practice without me; they can’t without you, idiot.”
“I said shut up.”
“Go back, Kageyama.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Just shut up, Hinata.”
There’s a frustrated sigh and a heavy thump of someone sitting on something, and then the air is filled with a long pause where neither of them speaks. Oddly, though, the silence doesn’t seem all that tense or uncomfortable. Maybe Kindaichi is reading it wrong, though— after all, he can’t see them.
Finally, Hinata speaks, his nosebleed-thickened voice a bit quieter than before. “You’re scared of the match after this one.” It isn’t a question.
Kindaichi runs through the tournament bracket in his head, trying to figure out what match he’s talking about. Karasuno should be playing Wakutani Minami this match — that team with the pineapple-hair guy, right? And Karasuno will win that game, no problem. They might have trouble with Wakutani’s strong defence at first, but Kindaichi has no doubt that they’ll find a way around it within the first set. Karasuno is nothing if not frustratingly creative — a team like Wakutani that relies heavily on a single, traditional strategy will be an easy target. So assuming they win that game, Karasuno’s next match would be against…
Oh. Seijoh. Right.
Okay, wait a second. Kindaichi understands being nervous to play that match — his team is strong, after all, and Karasuno has lost to them before at InterHigh, which seemed like a pretty crushing defeat. But being outright scared seems far-fetched, especially for someone as unfeeling as Kageyama. Nothing Kindaichi ever could’ve said or done would’ve gotten Kageyama to show any emotion, let alone fear. And he never would’ve straight-up talked about it.
But this conversation — this Kageyama — continues to surprise. “…Yeah,” Kageyama exhales after a pause. “I am.”
Kindaichi holds his breath. For the first time since this started, he feels… wrong. Like he’s listening in on something private.
Hinata must nod or give him some sort of look, because Kageyama sighs and starts talking again. “I just… I know it shouldn’t, but it bothers me. To see the way they all play together, I mean.”
There’s another pause, and oddly enough, Hinata doesn’t say anything. It strikes Kindaichi as more patience than he expected of that hyperactive little shit. Is that guy even capable of patience?
Kageyama seems to gather his thoughts in the interim, though not without a decent amount of grumbling. “It bothers me that Oikawa… gave them all a chance, I guess. And now they’re here because of that. He just… he hated me right from the start, but helped the others, and I never knew why. He taught them what he knew, but he wouldn’t even talk to me. I always had to learn by watching.”
“He saw you as a threat,” Hinata says quietly, and it doesn’t sound like an excuse but rather a confirmation of his own understanding of the problem.
“Yeah,” Kageyama says. “But I was just a kid. I didn’t know we were trying to, like, compete; I thought we were working together, cuz that’s what he was doing with everyone else. But, I mean, I guess not. And… I’m scared of losing to him, because it’ll be like… like…” He cuts off with a frustrated grumble.
“If we lose to him, it’ll feel like he was right to turn you away back then. Or at least like he thinks he was right,” Hinata fills in, as if that’s an entirely obvious answer.
But then Kageyama huffs and says, “Yeah,” and Kindaichi thinks that maybe it is an obvious answer to Hinata, that somehow he’s gotten to know this unknowable person so well in just a few short months that he can tell exactly what he’s thinking.
“Well it’s a good thing you won’t be losing, then,” Hinata says, “because we are going to kick Seijoh’s ass. You’re not alone out there, Kageyama. You have five other people watching your back. And we all trust you to be watching our backs, too.”
There’s a pause, and then Kageyama grunts. “Right.”
After another pause, Hinata hums, but it comes out weird because of his nose. “There’s something else.”
“Hm?”
“You’re thinking about something else, too.”
“Wh— I hate you,” Kageyama groans, and the end of the last word is muffled like he’s covered his mouth with something, maybe pressed his face into his hands. He huffs a sigh a moment later and it sounds clear again. “But yeah. I am.”
“Yeah, I know. I just said that. So spill.”
There’s a light thump followed by an ow! from Hinata, but Kageyama starts talking, anyway. “It’s Kindaichi and Kunimi— uh, the guy you called Onion Head and the other one who’s always with him.”
Kindaichi immediately perks up, partially with interest because they’re talking about him, and partially with annoyance because they’re apparently calling him Onion Head, which is dumb. His hair looks nothing like an onion, thanks.
“Oh, yeah. You played with those guys in middle school, right?”
“Yeah,” Kageyama grumbles. “They’re the ones who called me King. Or— the first ones who did. I… they’ve gotten better since starting high school, both of them. And they weren’t getting better when I was playing with them, and it’s stupid, but I just can’t stop wondering if—”
“Shut up.”
“No, I—”
“Shut up, Kageyama,” Hinata says, more forcefully but somehow not any more sharply than before. “I know what you’re gonna say and it’s bullshit. Just because they’ve gotten better without you doesn’t mean that you were the thing holding them back. That’s not how it works and you know it.”
“Stop interrupting, it could be a part of the reason—”
“So could anything! Maybe Onion Head decided he wanted to get better because a giant magical lion-turtle told him to in a dream. You don’t know, so you can’t say it was you.”
“You sound like a really dumb lawyer.”
“And even if it was you,” Hinata presses on, almost shouting now, “then so what? You’ve gotten better without them, too! You’re more creative with your sets and you talk more on the court, and you can adapt to any player in two seconds flat to let us be creative, too. And you have a real team now that actually gives a damn about you and thinks about why you act the way that you act instead of just— just running away without even trying to figure out what’s wrong and fix it! People that just give up on their teammates are so— so— spineless , god, it’s just so—”
“Hinata,” Kageyama says sharply, but there’s some weird tilt to his voice, something foreign that Kindaichi understands the least even amidst all of these things that he doesn’t understand, and whatever it is it makes Hinata shut up right then. Kindaichi can still hear him breathing heavily, though — quietly fuming, if he had to guess.
Kageyama grumbles. “Look, I know, okay? I know it was a big fucking deal and it pissed me the hell off. But if I keep being too mad about it they’ll see it on the court and they’ll see that it still gets to me and I won’t give them that satisfaction.”
Hinata stays quiet for a second and Kindaichi wonders, briefly, how much more he would know right now if he could see their faces. Finally, Hinata huffs. “Well, I’m still mad.”
“Oh, for real?” Kageyama snarks.
The two fall silent long enough for Kindaichi to get into his own head, and damn, he really doesn’t want to be there right now. Because, well… it is kind of true that the Kitagawa team walked away before trying to find any actual solutions. But— well, can you blame them? They were just kids! How were they supposed to know what to do with someone like Kageyama? They don’t teach you that in school! They couldn’t have… they couldn’t…
They couldn’t.
Could they?
At the same time, Kageyama apparently thinks about this enough to consider Kindaichi and Kunimi’s play styles and how they’ve changed since the three of them were teammates, and he wonders how he affected the other boys, and that’s… more than Kindaichi can say for himself.
…Could he have made things different? Would he have wanted to?
The next time Kageyama speaks, it’s so quiet that Kindaichi almost misses it. “…Thanks.”
And even though he heard it, it takes him a full minute to process that one word and all of its implications. It feels just like after that practice game when Kageyama had said ‘we will beat you’ instead of ‘I will beat you’ — he gets the sudden, cold feeling that a single word can change so much, that maybe this is a completely different person than the one he had turned his back on.
“What was that?” Hinata says, in a voice that says that he absolutely heard him.
“I’m not saying it again, asshole.”
Hinata laughs, but seems to accept it. “Hey, what are friends for?”
“We’re not friends,” Kageyama says, but the response sounds almost automatic, and there’s no bite or even intention behind the words.
“Right. That’s why you’re still missing warmups to sit in the trainer’s center with me.”
“Shut up, dumbass.” There’s a bit of shuffling of fabric — someone moving around or putting on a jacket? “Where is the trainer, anyway? Has that stopped bleeding yet?”
“I can’t tell. I haven’t stopped pinching my nose since— ow, hey!”
“Hm. Still bleeding.”
“Well, it definitely is now!”
“Oh, quit being a baby. I didn’t even do anything.”
“I dunno, dude, all this blood kinda looks like something!”
“The hell do you mean all this blood? You’ve bled more from tripping in the hallway.”
“I did that on purpose!”
“Uh huh. Which time?”
“I hate you.”
Y’know, they keep tossing that phrase around, back and forth and back like a couple of moronic parrots copying each other at every turn. But this is the most Kindaichi has ever heard Kageyama speak in one sitting, on or off the court. Hinata clearly cares about Kageyama, but Hinata also strikes him as one of those people who cares about everybody and has more friends than there are people on the planet. Kageyama, on the other hand, has always been something of a grumpy hermit at best and a total asshole at worst — and yet Hinata still seems particularly close with him, of all people. And in his own weird, emotionally constipated way, Kageyama seems to care about Hinata, too, more so than Kindaichi thought the guy was capable of. The old Kageyama never would’ve walked off a volleyball court for someone else, but now here he is, choosing to walk away from warmups just to accompany this orange idiot to the trainer for a minor injury that should only take a few minutes to fix. It’s just… it’s such a sharp contrast for Kageyama to… to suddenly manage to care about something other than himself and volleyball and Kindaichi is starting to wonder if… if he’d been wrong from the beginning. Maybe he’d misread some sign somewhere along the way that had led him to a flawed conclusion.
“Stop leaning on me,” Kageyama grumbles. “Your hair is annoying.”
“But you’re comfy,” Hinata whines, and Kageyama huffs, but there’s no sound of movement, no rustling of a person being pushed away or shrugged off.
Maybe Kindaichi had come to a flawed conclusion. Or maybe it’s just Hinata Shoyo, Karasuno’s very own Tiny Giant, the blindingly bright little ball of energy that seems to attract and befriend even the most closed-off people.
He finds himself glad, in some strange way. That Hinata had… been there. When Kindaichi himself wasn’t. Despite everything, Kindaichi doesn’t hate Kageyama Tobio. He just… he couldn’t be the person that that cold, angry kid needed back then. But if Kageyama is so different after such a short time, has grown so much in only a few months, then… maybe Hinata, with all his warmth and light, maybe he can be that person that will thaw Kageyama from the ice and break through that hard shell. Maybe he is that person.
And Kindaichi is glad.
“Dude. The game starts in twenty minutes,” Hinata is saying behind the other curtain. “You really need to go back.”
“I already told you I’m staying,” Kageyama replies haughtily.
“C’mon, man, you have to go.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“Kageyama, this game is important.”
“Yeah, well, lots of things are important,” Kageyama mutters, and Kindaichi’s eyes widen.
But Hinata either doesn’t catch the meaning behind his words, or he isn’t surprised by it. At this point, Kindaichi doesn’t know which is more likely. “How is the team supposed to warm up without you there?” Hinata fires back.
“Pretty easily? Sugawara is a setter, too, dumbass, it’s not like they’re just standing around doing nothing. If they needed me back that badly, Yachi or Kiyoko would be here yelling at me. Besides, we all know you’ll get lost on your way back to the gym if I leave you here alone.”
“Hey! Your sense of direction sucks, too!”
“At least I can see over people’s heads to figure out where I am, though.”
“Yeah, well your stupid height won’t matter if you’re too dumb to read the signs!”
The sounds of a physical fight break out once again, but this time Kindaichi finds himself smiling, for some reason. The slapping and shouting only stop when the door opens and someone walks in. The trainer thankfully decides to deal with Hinata first, sliding back the curtain and humming affirmatives as Kageyama bluntly explains what happened. It takes only a few seconds for the trainer to tell them that his nose isn’t broken and that he can play once it stops bleeding, and that they should run along to go watch their team warm up from the sidelines, to which Hinata responds with a laugh. They’re out the door less than a minute after the trainer entered, apparently racing each other to their team’s court, and Kindaichi releases the breath he feels like he’s been holding this whole time.
Later, when he meets back up with his team with a diagnosis of a small strain and nothing more, he finds them in the stands, ready to watch Karasuno play. Oikawa is busy bitching to Iwaizumi about Kageyama, but it’s pretty clear that the ace isn’t really listening. Kindaichi locates Kunimi sitting near them and takes the open seat to his left.
Kunimi is looking down at the court and glances up when he sits down. “Hey. How’s your ankle?”
Kindaichi shrugs and gets comfortable with the ice pack that the trainer gave him. “No big deal. I’m cleared to play. Already told Coach.”
Kunimi nods, and his focus moves back down to Karasuno’s warmup. “Looks like the shrimp is waiting out a nosebleed,” he mutters, and then he huffs a laugh. “Maybe Kageyama punched him in the face. Don’t get me wrong, the carrot top is super annoying, but it still sucks that the kid has to be paired with a guy that clearly hates him.”
On the outside, Kindaichi hums thoughtfully and nods. On the inside, he holds back a smile as Hinata speaks to the Karasuno coach and finally gets back out on the court. “Yeah,” Kindaichi says. “Must be tough.”